Anniversary Weekend – Day 2 pt.1
That’s myself and Robert Irvine from Food Network’s Dinner Impossible at Good Taste Pittsburgh yesterday. Good Taste was a great event to showcase food in the Pittsburgh area to people who may not know of some great products made here in PA. The highlights for me were Smith’s Hot Dogs (gotta support my Erie guys), Kelchner’s Horseradish (a definite sinus opener but they REALLY need to put the website on the jar), BEEF it’s what’s for dinner, Pronio’s Organic Foods, Buy Local (support your local farmers!), Tusca Global Tapas and Red Hot & Blue (more on them later).
One thing that did bug me was the amount of wine snob bitches (wine version of my beer snob bitches) that were pushing through the Wine & Spirits tent. These people are exactly why I can’t get into wine. Not only do you talk down to people and act all elitist but you have spew “hey look at me! I know how to drink wine!”. I know that there are multiple craft beerfests in our area but it would have been nice to see some local guys there.
Now for the man of the hour, Robert Irvine. I admit that going in I was not a fan of the guy. He always seemed like an arrogant ass. We went to his session and left in the middle because his audio wasn’t loud enough over the crowd. As we’re getting ready to leave my wife sees that he’s doing a book signing. I figured this would make a cool anniversary gift for ourselves so we bought the cookbook and waited in line. After 45 minutes our time was finally here.
What a great guy Robert was to us. Greeted us with a warm smile and firm handshake (the guy is RIPPED). Very polite, talkative and personable. He spent time to ask us well, about us and if we both cook together. We posed for a picture (above) and went on our way. Here is one more admirable thing Robert did. Ahead of us at the signing was a group of young chefs from the Art Institute. He gave each one of those young kids advice for being a chef and reminded them to never forget where they came from and to give back to the community because even Soup Kitchens can use help. That blew me away and quickly vaulted him to the top of my favorite list.
Tomorrow I’ll bring the 2nd part of day 2. Day 3 we’re just doing stuff around the house and getting ready for the Steelers game at 8pm.
