Hey everyone, time to get all jealous.
My mom works at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago as a rep for furniture and home decor vendors (she’s the person who gets all the cool stuff you like in Crate and Barrel from the manufacturers to the store), and because of her connections, scored us two passes to the International Housewares Association show downtown at McCormick Place . It’s basically a convention for all the companies that make kitchen gadgets and cooking tools and other housewares.
Fact: McCormick Place is huuuge and if we make it through the whole thing I’ll be amazed. Fact #2: Tyler Florence is keynote speaking about cooking in America or something worth repeating on this blog (downside: it’s at like 7:30am tomorrow. I don’t normally wake up in the single digits, so he better be all that and a bag of potato chips or else I’ll be mildly grumpy). Fact #3: MASAHARU MORIMOTO is gonna demo some knives from JA Henckles, and while I’m partial to Wusthof, I’ll put my differences aside to watch the IRON CHEF incarnate chop anything.
Stephanie Izard from Top Chef: Chicago and Todd English are gonna be demoing/talking about something too, in addition to a bunch of other awesome people (more chefs, cookbook authors, etc).
My mom claims Le Creuset will introduce new colors (ooooo!) and all the big names are there. I’ve always wanted to go to Macworld or PMA or some other big nerd conference, but it’ll be cool to watch the kitchen geeks come out. Their website says no cameras, but what kind of photojournalist would I be if I didn’t try to sneak some pictures of all the wonder and magic. Worse comes to worse I play dumb, talk my way outta it in a scottish/german/australian accent (it’s the only one I know) and/or blame my mother. I’ll write up a big story later in the week.
ALSO, apparently Gale Gand, pastry chef extraordinaire at TRU in Chicago (aka one of the coolest restaurants ever) lives down the street from me. I’m gonna see if she has time later in the week to do an interview for the site. Let’s get some star power up in here.
