Foodbuzz Food Blogger?s Festival 2010

The second annual Foodbuzz Blogger Festival took place last weekend in San Francisco, where foodies from around the nation gathered to celebrate and eat together. There were three days of events including a Friday night reception and street food fair (or “fare” as they like to say); all-day events on Saturday including morning breakout sessions, afternoon tasting pavilion, and evening gala sit down dinner; and a farewell brunch Sunday morning.

First of all, the zillions of local Bay Area bloggers and I were super lucky that this fiesta was taking place right in our backyards. I literally went to the Friday event after work that day like it was no big deal. Second, for anyone who is a “featured publisher” on the Foodbuzz website (note badge and ad at the top right of my blog), the $350 admission fee is waived. Needless to say, I was pretty enthused about a weekend of free food and drink.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend all the events, but I did go to the welcome reception street fair and the gala dinner which were pretty awesome.

Friday night’s street “fare” was a bit chaotic, but basically included meeting some new friends, eating from ridiculously plentiful appetizer trays, meandering around to different food booths (most of which served meat items but some of which didn’t) and (as a result) consuming a variety of different foods and beverages. I met three friends that night, too, which was super exciting.

The welcome reception in the Herbst Pavilion of Fort Mason Center

Some views of the welcome reception, including cupcake display that spelled the word "Foodbuzz"!

Serious cheese plates were at every table. Yum!

Saturday was the big day where there were breakout session in the morning (cooking workshops, demos, writing workshops), a tasting pavilion in the afternoon and a gala dinner in the Ferry Building at night. I only was able to attend the dinner, but it was really fun!

I met up with my foodie friend from the night before, Darcy, and we enjoyed some wine outside the Ferry Building. This was “mingling” time, but Darcy and I are both a bit antisocial and pretty much kept to ourselves. After a while we found two other friends, Quinn and Kathy, from the night before and chatted it up with them until it was time to go upstairs for dinner.

Dinner was beautifully set up with dozens of round tables in the main balcony of the Ferry Building. We had a couple announcements/speakers and then dug into a full dinner and wine pairing. They were even sensitive to dietary schtuff and let me do the pescetarian thing (no meat except for seafood) and gave Darcy the vegan treatment (no animal products at all).

The Gala dinner in the Ferry Building.

Table settings at the gala dinner.

Some food from the gala dinner included a feta tarte, mushroom patty, tofu "scallops", real scallops, rack of lamb, halibut steak and almond cake with fruit for dessert.

Overall it was a pretty fabulous event; I’m only sorry that I wasn’t able to attend more of the activities. Maybe next year!

Thanks Foodbuzz!