Foodportunity

My boyfriend's birthday was at the end of June but he just got the rest of his gift on Monday. A couple of days before his big day, I planned a little dinner party (that ended up not being all that little actually) with a few handfuls of his favorite people. He did the cooking, 'cause, well, that's kind of how it usually ends up working around here. It was a great night, but I left thinking that I still wanted to give him something that felt more like an actual gift and less like forced labor.

My post 20 person dinner party budget meant the gift had to be reasonably small and affordable. I debated a handful of options for a couple of days before opting to give him a couple of tickets to Foodportunity, a Seattle food-focused event that's organized by Keren Brown (aka Frantic Foodie) and aimed at connecting people who love to eat. We'd kicked ourselves for not attending the last one when we saw the likes of Thierry Rautureau of Rover's and Luc tweeting from it, and I like the idea of giving experiences as presents. So there you go.

Monday's event was Foodportunity's fourth and its one year anniversary. A few standouts from the list of participating restaurants were Luc/Rover's, Matt's in the Market, Zoe, Cantinetta, Fresh Bistro, a handful of dishes from Tom Douglas' Prosser Farms and the forthcoming Blackboard Bistro. Matt's had my favorite bite of the night--a pork belly bahn mi--and I was pleasantly surprised that a seafood cocktail from Fresh was a close second (both below).

We'd gotten there right around 6:00 when the doors opened and made our way around the room, briefly chatting with a few of the chefs and table hosts along the way. A couple of hours later, we were stuffed and decided to move on to BalMar in Ballard to round out the night. I'm not sure we did the amount of Foodportunity mingling, meeting and greeting we intended...but I'm also not sure I mind ending the boy's birthday celebration by getting lost in our own little cocktail conversations either.