Foodbuzz Community Dinner

This post describes the evening of Day 2 of the Foodbuzz Festival.  For the Day 1 Street food Fair, please click here.  For Day 2 morning , please click here (olive oil tasting) and here (Ferry Building Marketplace) and Day 2 afternoon (Tasting Pavilion) click here.

Foodbuzz partnered with Outstanding In the Field to provide an incredible meal for all the Foodbuzz attendees.  We took a bus into a random ware-house-y part of San Francisco (many people cautioned us NOT to walk around there by ourselves!) to enjoy a delicious meal made by executive chef David Lee of Namu and his team.

It really was in a vegetable warehouse!
Our bus driver got lost while trying to get us to the warehouse, and the whole bus sort of freaked out as we meandered around the not-so-safe parts of San Francisco, at some points even venturing down the wrong way on a one-way street!

When the bus driver picked up his cell phone and started talking rapidly in Chinese, we knew we were in trouble!

Fortunately, iphone carriers on our bus were able to direct the driver safely back to the warehouse!

Here’s the incredible meal we enjoyed!

Rows and Rows of mushrooms soup

Mushroom dashi, maitake, shimeji, enoki mushrooms
I really enjoyed the lightness of this soup, and I love mushrooms.  The small, crunchy pickled vegetables (possibly daikon) was a bit unusual but not too bad.

Udon, grilled Monterey calamari in a browned butter ponzu reduction, cucumber, kaiware, frisee & yellow pear tomato with chojang & sesame vinaigrette
I thought this was delicious.  The calamari was perfectly cooked (not too hard and chewy), and the flavors were excellent.

Mushroom Risotto with koshikikari rice, crispy maitake mushrooms
I loved the mushroom-y earthiness of this dish.  I think I went back for seconds on this one. . .

Roasted Brussels sprouts, ponzu fried garlic, guanciale, bonito flakes
Yum . . these are among the best Brussels sprouts I have ever had. I think the super umami aromatic flavors coming from both the guanciale (unsmoked Italian bacon) and the bonito flakes (dried fish flakes) plus the fried garlic made this dish incredible.  

Soy braised beef cheeks and oxtails, baby carrots and fingerling potato, OB Beer and denjang demi
These were soft and tender and had lots of nice flavor.

And of course, what do you expect at a food blogger's festival?

A little Bit of Spain in Iowa, Poor Girl Eats Well, and Noodle Fever.