This year’s FoodBuzz Blogger Festival dinner was held at the Ferry Building. Not a bad location, eh? It was a formal sit-down with 4 courses and wine pairings. Look at all this tableware!
We started with the appetizer, which was an absolute beet fest! If you don’t like beets, then this would have been the worst thing ever. The tart was made with golden beets, was topped with crimson beets, feta, currants, arugula, and served alongside a basil puree. As for me, I love beets, so I totally dug this.
Next up were some huge seared scallops with braised fennel in a champagne beurre blanc sauce. These were cooked quite well, although we did notice that they were only seared on one side. I’m not all that into fennel, but this was pretty good stuff. You know me, I’m all about scallops.
Onto the lamb chops! These suckers were served with butternut squash mash and a bunch of expensive expensive mushrooms, which I promptly did not eat. But one of my tablemates took them. I’m not that crazy about lamb, but I enjoyed these particular chops. And the mash was great.
Dessert was tarta de almendras, a buttery almond cake served with oranges and figs and a spanish sherry sabayon. It’s quite a mouthful to describe, but it tasted even better. It was a lovely dinner with great new friends!

Up until this point, my dining experiences in New Orleans hadn’t been all that exciting. We ended up at fairly touristy places with good but not particularly great food. But then it all changed when we went to Cochon. We tried to go here on a Sunday night, but note to visitors, there are many restaurants that are closed on Sundays, including Cochon. It’s not anywhere near Bourbon street, which is a nice plus.The place is pretty big on the inside with a good sized bar. The kitchen is fairly open. I really dug the brick walls and all the pig art. This is a small plate kind of place, but they do have some entrees. And yes, there’s a lot of pig on the menu.
Some complimentary rolls served in a cute little bucket. These are super buttery and I’m sure, terrible for you.
Here we have the fried alligator with chili garlic aioli. Sure, it tastes like chicken, but like delicious and juicy chicken. These wood-fired roasted oysters were some of the best oysters I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever had roasted oysters before. We ended up ordering more because we just had to!This was the deviled crab dip with butter crackers. This was good, but nothing great.Here are the fried boudin with pickled peppers. I’m not sure what these were supposed to taste like so I have no idea if these are good or not.The baked mac and cheese. Ok, this may be the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had. I couldn’t get enough.The spicy grilled pork ribs with watermelon pickle. These ribs were indeed spicy, and also sweet and tasty.  Here we have the very attractive braised country style rib with brown rice, pickled mushrooms, and beets. I liked everything about this, except for the pork. It was too porky. Do you know what I mean? But everything else was great.Here’s one of the entrees – the smoked beef brisket with horseradish potato salad.On to the desserts! The peanut butter cream pie with a big hunk taken out of it. Oh yeah, this was as good as you can imagine.The adorable Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with coconut-lime sorbet and dulce de leche. Yum.Finally, the Caramelized Apple Brioche with rum raisin ice cream. Also yum. We had a pretty big party and they were able to accommodate us with a long table in the front. The multitude of servers all kept our tummies full and our thirsts quenched. I would go back for the gator, oysters, and mac and cheese again and again. This is a must-stop!

One of the things I was most excited about was visiting Cafe Du Monde for new orleans style coffee and beignets. I hopped on down to the original one to wait in a long ass line.
It doesn’t matter when you go here, it’s going to be busy. There’s table service and also a take-out line. Either way, you’re going to wait. It’s crazy and crowded and the servers run around all over the place.
The beignets come in orders of three and they’re surprisingly large and puffy, yet dense. Oh man, when these come out all hot and greasy, you can’t help but scarf them down. It comes with a shocking heap of powdered sugar on top. The funniest thing is that everyone that’s here gets powdered sugar all over their laps. The servers have it all over their entire bodies, it’s rather hilarious. It’s like a rite of passage, getting powdery white stuff all over you. If I had easy access to this place, I’d surely be 1000 lbs.