Caviar. Gobs of it, served on tiny blinis with a dab of crème fraiche. "We used about ten kilos of whitefish caviar from Northern California tonight, " said Chef Benjamin Bailly of Petrossian, the fine dining and caviar emporium on Robertson. It was towards the end of TASTE OF BEVERLY HILLS' Saturday night party, the third evening of this very successful event. After garnering two such dollops, I walked across the aisle to Chef Kerry Simon's SIMON LA booth to sample his startling offering: a Maine Lobster and Black Truffle Pot Pie, served in a small ceramic cup, with a morsel of the season's first sunchoke, green peas and oyster mushrooms. Both were not something you would usually see at a food festival, but this was not an ordinary event...not by a long shot. As I reported in my HuffPost last week about opening night, the four day/night TASTE OF BEVERLY HILLS, sponsored by Food & Wine Magazine, confounded all of its participants and guests by being so much more than expected. And how often can you say that about anything these days?
I've never met the guy, Jeff Best of Best Events, behind the project, but he must be something of a magician to have created this massive and delicious wonderment. The site itself turned out to be astonishing...atop the parking garage across from the Beverly Hilton, they build two huge spacious tents the size of football fields, abetted by several stages and acres of tables and seating. Then he and his associates enrolled over a hundred of the city's top (and bottom) restaurants to participate, with an equal number of wineries and spirit companies. (Mescal, spicy rum, Prosecca anyone?) I suppose a word of praise should be offered to the half-dozen main sponsors who came into the event: Life's Good (I agree that it is, but I never expected a high-tech garbage can company to tell me so!); there were several smart Infinity cars scattered about the site, all attended by equally smart blond women demonstrating their features (those of the car, not the women); American Express had a comfortable lounge where cardholders could relax and rest their feet; Stella Artois, a Belgian beer which actually is quite good, had a big display with working spigots; the Beverly Hilton, of course, although I do have a bone to pick with them, raising the self-parking rate in the garage to a flat $25 was outrageous; Angelino Magazine, whose food critic Brad Johnson had an esteemed event of his own recently; Intelligensia, Nick Griffith's fine coffee company in Silverlake and Pasadena, and S. Pellegrino, which I drank because my favorite, Fiji Water, doesn't yet have a sparkling water. The city's mayor, the Honorable Jimmy Delshad, was instrumental in making it work, which should earn him another term or two, especially after witnessing his comedy performance with three of the Drago brothers at their cooking demonstration Sunday evening. P.R. maven Mary Wagstaff, whose fabulous platoon of women did a smashing job in telling the world about the party, informed me that the Beverly Hills Education Foundation will receive some of the proceeds. Tickets averaged $150 each evening, which seems high but, hey, this was an expensive big deal all around and no one went home hungry or thirsty (which is more than we can say about much of the world.)
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