Post #300: Top Dish Boston!

Wow, just noticed that I've written 299 posts prior to this one! Seems like #300 ought to be some kind of "best of" or reflective piece, but alas, I simply want to quickly recap the fun time we had at Top Dish Boston Friday night. Many thanks to Tim Stansky of the new Exhale Magazine for inviting us to this event that they sponsored in support of the Greater Boston Food Bank.

We knew we'd arrived at a food event when we saw this plate in the parking lot at the Epi Center in South Boston (home of Artists for Humanity). Upon arrival, Jodi and I got to choose signs for our mug shot.

Top Dish Boston featured locally sourced food, as indicated in my sign--and yes, it all tasted very good. There were dozens of restaurants and other food vendors on hand to showcase their dishes. We started Beef Empanadas from El Centro. The chef explained the beef came from his father's ranch in Mexico--now that's a family business! Very tasty, paired with a nice organic Spanish Monastrell wine. He had quite a few other items to offer, some pictured below, but we knew we needed to save room for other tables.

We went on to sample some what may have been my favorite dish of the night: pan-seared gnochhi with local goat cheese and mint filling, served with an heirloom tomato sauce. Wow! Made by the Tuscan Kitchen--they are based in Salem, NH. I anticipate heading north for more of this soon!

Another interesting dish was Frico with Speck and a White Nectarine Relish. Speck is an Italian cured pork, the frico referred to parmesan crisps. Creative and tasty combo, presented by the chef from Erbaluce, shown below.

People had been raving about the pumpkin hummus that Wilson Farm was serving, so we finally made it over there for our last stop of the night. That was very good, but I'd say I liked their wild mushroom stuffing better--so tasty that they were serving it on its own! But the real testament to how good the stuffing is comes from the Twitter confession of Todd Heberlein a.k.a. @WilsonFarmChef that he'd eaten the leftover stuffing for breakfast!

I've only touched upon a small sampling of the good food available at the event...hopefully enough of a taste to have you want to try for yourself next time!