Beat me or eat me!

No, I’m not trying to make my blog post titles more feisty and suggestive, I’m just quoting the t-shirt that I donned yesterday in an attempt to promote The Brooklyn Cheese Experiment while also interviewing contestants and spectators.  Sadly, I neglected to take pictures or sample all of the contestants’ dishes.  Instead, I’m going to defer to the good people at the Village Voice who covered the event in detail.

The 30-second rundown is this: cooks prepped, they came, they served, some conquered, and all laughed themselves to pieces at the cheese & grapefruit+vodka cocktail party.  Quick note: grapefruit vodka doesn’t really pair well with a particularly garlicky camembert.  That’s an aftertaste that just won’t quick.  My favorite dish, even if she weren’t my favorite competitor, belonged to Bonnie Suarez.  Her three cheese spicy cracker with a chilled tomato-ricotta soup chaser put CHEESE in the forefront and didn’t relegate it to a side flavor.  If you adhere to Iron Chef judging guidelines, then you know that if you luck out and your secret ingredient is cheese instead of something like a gingko nut, you count your damn blessings and make your dish all about the cheese.

After the after party, a mass gathering headed to Lucky Eight restaurant in Borough Park Brooklyn – my first time dining in both this incredible Chinese restaurant and this neighborhood in general.  Well, I was immediately stopped and asked for directions in Chinese which is funny because a) I’d never been there before and b) I don’t speak Chinese.  I used my handy iPhone to help communicate directions and even drew my newfound Chinese friend a little map to where she was going.  After dinner, we had to call for car service to get home as there don’t seem to be any taxis roaming about in Brooklyn outside of Williamsburg.  Here’s a little tip – if you ask a Chinese restaurant for the number a good car service and they nod, write down a number, but never really acknowledge you in English, chances are that your car service is going to be a multilingual experience.  Once again, my iPhone bridged the great divide and Chris and I managed to get home safe and sound.

Today, however, I am trying to get over what seems to be the onset of a mild flu.  My weapons of choice in this immune battle are gummy bear vitamins by the handful.  Let’s hope it’s not the swine flu…