Emporiyum DC

Another year, another awesome Emporiyum.  I'm just loving the Baltimore/DC food scene these days.  There are all sorts of fun events that showcase the awesome chefs and restaurants we have here in MD.  The best event to do this is the Emporiyum - 2 days & over 30 restaurants, food trucks and foodie businesses, showing off all the amazing food they create.  

This year's was in the Union Market Space in DC, which was the best venue yet, in my opinion.  There was tons of space - full of tons of people of course.  And if you got tired of the Emporiyum, you could just mosey on next door to the actual Union Market and check out all their yumminess too. 

There were quite a few new places, but some of the old favorites were there as well. I was sad to see that no Voltaggio restaurants were there.  They are of course, always my favorite.  In fact, there weren't any real celebrity chefs there besides Erik Bruner Yang - the rock star of ramen (which I will say, that's a name he truly deserves - yum!)  My other complaint was the complete lack of anyone selling water.  The drink stalls were selling only alcohol - not even sodas were being sold.  That's a little ridiculous.  I had to beg a cup off the Living Social people and use the water fountain to fill it.  Other than that, it was a rousing success as always. 

They even seemed to realize that if you make smaller portions or give free samples, people will eat more.  Half size sandwiches were being sold as well as individual sized pies or single cookies.  That was my most favorite part.  Yay Emporiyum people, for getting a clue!

 These pieces of art were made completely out of plastic cups.

Reflective Air Stream Selfie!

And here's the important part - the food!

 Erik Bruner Yang's awesome Ramen - So delicious!

 This was the best thing I ate all day!  I have no idea how to pronounce it, but it's basically a wafer, with to die for marshmallow on top, covered in chocolate and coconut. OMG! It was life changing : )

 According to the Top Chef judges, Mike Isabella's Pepperoni sauce was life-changing.  Obviously they never had the marshmallow cookie thing I had before this.  It wasn't bad but I'm no Isabella fan, so that may have clouded my judgement. 

Dooby's was my favorite from last year, and this year it was my second favorite this year.  I have no idea what they put on that fried chicken but it's spicy and sweet and perfect.  The honey chips were also unbelievably tasty. 

Emporiyumm- y Part 2

So it would seem that my dreams of being a food photographer are over, based on the ridiculously bad photos that I managed to snap at the Emporiyum.  So depressing!  But at least the food was delicious.  That certainly made up for it!  There was only one thing I had that was gross.  It was some crazy cookie thing, that was all lemon and ginger and horrid.

Best of the Day:

Shake Shack (as usual): This time around they had their burgers as opposed to mushroom burgers and their custard of the day was Salted Pretzel.  It sounds horrible but it was delicious!

Dooby's: Korean Fried Chicken.  It was juicy and crispy even though it was smothered in some awesome sweet and spicy sauce. On top of enjoying every last bite, I was pretty proud that I managed to not get the sweet, sticky, spicy sauce all over my khaki pants (in retrospect, light colored pants - not the greatest fashion choice to eat in all day!)

City Dining Cards - I'm not sure if a specific restaurant cooked these up or if some awesome chef works for the City Dining Card company, but for $1 they were serving Amish hot pretzels with Beer Cheese sauce.  Delicious!  I would have paid 5x that amount.  It was the very first thing I had all day and was pretty much the best!

Best of the Rest:

Fatty Sundays: Gourmet chocolate covered pretzels covered in toffee.  

Sweet Lydias: Handmade marshmallows - soft and not at all like the bagged kind.  But my dad makes them better so I was less than impressed.

District Donut: Chocolate Donut Holes - good, but their shirts were even better.  All the District Donut chefs wore shirts that said "Semper Fry" : )

Wit & Wisdom: BLTs.  Delicious!

Butter Brothers: The Butter Bun from yesterday.  Warm and gooey but incorrectly named. It was way more cinnamony than buttery.

Charleston Biscuits: Buttermilk biscuits, that were soft and perfect.  But they were serving them plain - major bummer.  Another company was serving corn biscuits (which were so not biscuits) with honey.  The biscuits would have been so much better with honey!

All in all, I left very stuffed and very happy!

Emporiyum-my!

Another year, another Emporiyum in Baltimore.  And I have to say, they finally nailed it. Everything was perfect: the food, the space, the weather, even the prices (just not my photos, but that's beside the point.)  I love the whole idea of loads of food vendors in one area, and getting to sample their wares.  But in the past, the prices were so high and the portions were so big, that it was difficult to fit it all in.  I could never figure out why no one had sample sizes for sale or just give out free samples (which most people did, but some of the bigger ticket vendors did not.)

Well, apparently the Emporiyum Gods were listening and that's just what they did this year. The prices came down a lot.  And places that were selling large items, like lobster rolls or specialty hot dogs, were selling half portions for half the price.  It was perfect!  Everyone wins - attendees get to try a little of everything, and I'm sure the vendors made even more money in the end.  

Below are the iPhone photos I managed to grab, which as I'm seeing them now, are slightly blurry (I promise I wasn't drinking).  Tomorrow, I'll run down all the yumminess and see if my fancy camera managed any better shots (probably not - the lighting was awful!)  But even without the photos, I'm sure I'll have the memories of the food for a long time - the best part being that all the vendors that were to die for, have restaurants all about town.  I'm foreseeing a very delicious summer ahead!

 Butter Bun (which was pretty much all cinnamon...) - Delish!

Isn't boxed water so much cuter (and more polite) than bottled water? : )

Friday Five

As it's ridiculously late, and I'm ridiculously old (seriously, who stays up until midnight? this is crazy talk!)  I'm going to focus on the top 5 things that made me happy this week.  

1. Even though she kept me up late, I love having a bestie evening - going for BBQ, eating all sorts of yummy food then hanging and chatting for 4 more hours.  There's much to discuss and so much more to laugh about!

2. I'm super, duper ecstatic that it looks like we turned the corner on the crazy changing Maryland weather.  It's finally spring!  The trees are blooming.  The sun is shining.  The flowers are popping up.  And most importantly, it's finally warm enough for capris and flip-flops.  Thank goodness for that! I liked my boots, but flip-flops will eternally be my most favorite footwear.

3. I'm also very, very happy that the campaign I shared last night, made it past 12K shirts in the 24 hours since it started.  In case you're counting, that's 11K more shirts than they hoped to sell in the first place.  And with some sweatshirts (the cheapest are $19.99) topping out at $39.99, that's a WHOLE lot of money for charity.

4. I'm excited that the dude with the anger management problems at work has decided to quit, single handedly making our lives and his (I hope) much better.  The dude was nice but seriously, life's too short to be that moody all the time!

5. And mostly, I'm just waiting excitedly for Emporiyum tomorrow and Texas next week.  I love having things to look forward to, and these are the first of many fun excursions planned for the year.  So far 2015 is looking up!

Empori-YUM

This weekend, the second sort-of annual Empori-yum in DC.  It was held in Union Market in Northeast, which was a super cool and trendy venue.  The vendors were all in a working warehouse - complete with rolls of fiber and cabling, concrete and steel) - with all sorts of "Yum"s around; one made with Peeps or another with hot pink fiberglass.  It was all very hipster but really cool too.  I'm not sure whose idea this was or who's in charge of the whole shabang, but they are fantastic at their jobs!

The Good:

~ DC's had considerably more vendors than Baltimore's.  There had to be at least 25 this time around as opposed to the Baltimore's dozen or so.  And the range - anything from almond milk to shake shack - was quite wide.  

~  The free samples this time around were also pretty amazing.  You had to pay for lots and lots but you could also sample lots and lots too.  I had noodles, smoked meat, caramels, grilled cheese, spicy nuts, toffee pretzels, and grits.  All were delicious!  Then of course there was the actual real food you had to buy...

~ The ramen from Toki Underground was fabulous as usual!  Oh my goodness, where has that been all my life?  So delicious!  Then there was the Smores pie from Butter + Scotch. Loved the toasted marshmallow on top.  The crust and the pie itself were pretty good but the marshmallow was the best!

The Bad:

~ Momofuku Milk Bar was all out of the Crack Pie when I finally got around to their booth - oh so depressing!

~ The Pork Buns from Eastside Kings, which were a last minute purchase when I saw someone else's, were not how I'd imagined pork buns.  The bun itself wasn't bad, and the pork was good, but the weird things on top and the shrimp sauce were so not my thing.  I needed to get another snack just to get the taste out of my mouth.

~ Shake Shack was only selling hot dogs and maple custard - not the cheeseburger and chocolate custard I was hoping for.  

All is in all, it was an awesome experience.  I wasn't thrilled about going at first because of the cold weather and the ridiculous drive (that sucked even more than I'd thought it would), but I'm pretty happy I went, and will most definitely be going next year as well!