Gregory Gourdot's Crispy Turkey Wing with Korean Chile Sauce
Feast Portland 2017 featured 134 chefs, 31 wineries, 15 breweries, 11 artisans, and 12 distilleries, that delivered the delicious to nearly 18,000 attendees. Over the course of 4 days, I caught up with old friends and ate my way through the amazing Bon Appetit Hot 10 dinner, the Grand Tastings, Smoked and Sunday’s Brunch Village. As they say, 4 days to Feast, 361 days to recover. So what did you miss?
The highlights from this year’s Grand Tasting included more substantial bites from Chef Earl Ninsom (Langbaan, PaaDee) with his Coppa with Seasonal Fruit and Papaya Salad, and Los Angeles Chef Ray Garcia (Broken Spanish) Charred Brussels Sprouts, Mole Blanco, Habanero and Peanuts. The two were putting Finex cast iron to work in Williams Sonoma’s booth at the event. Local tea purveyor Smith Teamaker brought a new ready-to-drink chai to sample and spotlighted their Arbequina Oolong, a Feast special collaboration tea with Chef Tom Douglas.
On the sweet side, Portland’s Wailua Shave Ice delivered two awesome flavors — triple coconut and blueberry basil. Sisters Baking Company in Edmonds sampled their gluten-free Rain City Crunch granola bark, including an autumn appropriate Pumpkin Spice version. On the beer and wine front (and there were a lot of them), A to Z Wineworks’ new release Sparkling Rosé was a perfect last sip of summer. Scroll through the pics and for more tasty bites from Feast Portland’s Grand Tasting, visit our Instagram @dailywaffle.
Feast Portland 2017’s Grand Tasting also had a fun series of book signings and chef Q&As with Seattle Chef Renee Erickson, Portland’s Andy Ricker and NYC’s Christina Tosi. Erickson, who owns 4 restaurants in Seattle, including Walrus and the Carpenter and the Whale Wins, sat down with Bon Appetit Deputy Editor Andrew Knowlton for a wide ranging Q&A from her first food memory (dungeness crab) to a Seattle must-try restaurant, other than her own (The Corson Building). On cookbooks, she recommended Paul Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand and Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking as two every cook should have on their shelf. She’s also a fan of Doritos — shh, don’t tell!
My favorite event of the weekend was Smoked! Every year, chefs from Portland and around the country double-down on the cookout of the year. My best bite from Smoked! this year was a tie between Matt’s BBQ & Langbaan’s Brisket with Jungle Curry and Gregory Gourdet’s Crispy Turkey Wing with Korean Chile sauce. We also got a sneak peek at two new ice cream flavors Tillamook will be debuting in 2018 — a Pendleton Whisky Maple and a Sea Salt with Honeycomb Toffee. I’m looking to have more info on both soon.
Ethan Stowell, Tom Douglas and Matt Fortner were on hand repping Seattle at Smoked! Stowell brought tacos with a hefty portion of delicious smoked lamb. I’ll be combing the menus at his joints to see if they ever turn up. Douglas and Fortner served up the seafood with fire roasted clams with Bristol Bay salmon with pork jowel. Sustainability was the name of the game, with Bamboo Sushi promoting their sustainable seafood stance and with Douglas’ team raising awareness about Save Bristol Bay, an effort to save one of the last salmon fisheries in Alaska from the Pebble Mine project.
Mark your calendars, dates are already set for Feast Portland 2018 – September 13-16, 2018. I can’t wait!!