Newport Beach Wine & Food Festival This Weekend!

Newport Beach's second annual Wine & Food Festival runs this Friday, October 2nd, through Sunday, October 4th, at the Newport Beach Civic Center. Tickets are still available.

The main event is the Daytime Festival from 1pm to 5pm on Saturday, October 3rd, and Sunday, October 4th. Cooking demonstrations, book signings, and tastings will be hosted by a distinguished lineup of local and celebrity chefs, including Rick Bayless of Red O, Brooke Williamson of Hudson House and the Tripel, Andrew Gruel of Slapfish, and Yvon Goetz of the Winery. Williamson is a personal favorite, as her restaurants are part of my regular lunch rotation.

30 of Orange County's hottest restaurants will be offering tastings throughout the afternoon in the Grand Tasting Pavilions. Different restaurants will be participating on different days, so check the schedule.

Proceeds from the Newport Beach Wine & Food Festival will go to benefit the Project Hope Alliance, which aims to free homeless children from the limitations of their circumstances by assisting with education, transportation, and after school programs.

Tickets are available HERE.
A chefs attending is available HERE.
A list of participating restaurants is available HERE.

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Mid-Autumn Festival Dumpling Feast

(Home made dumplings with pork, Napa cabbage, and shrimp.)
Growing up, the Mid-Autumn Festival was a low-key affair for my family. Since it often happened during a school night, my mother would buy mooncakes from a local Chinese bakery and make us a hot pot or dumplings. When my siblings and I were younger, we'd sometimes go out to the backyard to look at the moon while she told us stories about the rabbit who lived there. As we got older and more busy with school, the specialness of the holiday faded. But, we always ate mooncakes and we were always together.


As part of a mixed marriage hundreds of miles from my family, I've gotten used to celebrating many Chinese holidays on my own. My wife, Cat, is always happy to join me and very open to new cultural experiences. Yet, while she intellectually understands our traditions, she feels no more of an emotional connection to them than I do to the Christmas or St. Patrick's day celebrations I participate in with her Scottish-Irish family.


(Kraig's Smoked Beef Short Ribs.
You celebrate the Moon Festival your way, we'll do it ours.)
This year, @losangelesfoodiegirl, @kraigescobar, and I were blessed with an invitation join our friends William & Kelly, and their lovely family, for a home made dumpling feast. William's parents, on a visit from Hangzhou, China, cooked dish after dish of his childhood favorites. Far from my family and their own Mid-Autumn meal, it was indescribably comforting.


(Home made dumplings with pork, chives, and egg.)
The centerpiece of the festivities were dumplings made by William's family. Plump, juicy, and perfectly seasoned, they were served with a little Chinese black vinegar and sliced garlic as accents. Unlike the dumplings made in many restaurant kitchens and factories, which use industrial food processors and mixers, the fillings in William's dumplings were chopped and mixed by hand, resulting in an unmistakeable texture and mouth-feel.


A regional specialty I'd never tried before, and one that William has never seen outside of Hangzhou, a paste of seasoned pork was spread onto gossamer thin "crepes" of fried egg, rolled, steamed, chilled, and sliced. The time intensive preparation yielded a delicate flavor that enveloped the tongue like an edible hug.


Another fine example of Chinese charcuterie, carefully selected cuts of beef containing both meat and tendon were braised in a spiced, soy-based stock, then chilled in to a toothsome, beefy jello. A mainstay of Chinese banquets and feasts, it was served thinly sliced.


A hung over Pitmaster Kraig contributed his signature dish of beef short ribs seasoned simply with salt and pepper, and slow smoked for over eight hours. The flavors were carefully balanced, with gently yielding meat that practically melted away.


The indisputable winner of our feast was a deceptively simple plate of cucumbers marinated in salt, garlic, and sesame oil. Crunchy and light, it helped cleanse our palates of the other rich dishes. The key, according to William, is knowing how to pick the cucumbers. They have to be fresh.


There were an assortment of desserts that most of us were too full to eat, including watermelon, a chilled soup of lotus seed and white fungus, mooncakes, egg tarts, and these cupcakes I picked up from Layer Cake Bakery in Irvine. I cannot repeat enough how thankful we are to William & Kelly for welcoming us into their home and sharing these special dishes with us.


That evening, Cat and I found a spot in our neighborhood to watch the lunar eclipse. I shared with Cat a story I'd heard about the blood moon as a child. That every few decades the wolf who lived in the sky would try to hunt and kill the rabbit that lived on the moon. The moon would turn red, and the people would set off fireworks, bang their pots and pans, and yell to scare the wolf away. We held hands and wished the rabbit luck.


Later, once Cat had been driven inside by the chill night air, I texted my siblings a reminder about the lunar eclipse. My sister texted back that they were going outside to try to spot it. Maybe, for just a moment, we all looked at the same moon from different places under the same sky and remembered the same story.

(Pictures taken with my Canon Rebel XTi and iPhone 5s.)

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LA Weekly Burgers & Beer 2015 Buddy Pack

The LA Weekly has been on a tear over the past year with food festivals like Tacolandia, Pancake Breakfast, Sips & Sweets, and the Essentials. This Saturday's Burgers & Beer at the LA Coliseum is shaping up to be amazing, with burgers from headliners like Thomas Keller's Bouchon, the infamous Hawkins House of Burgers, Belcampo, and Vaka Burger. The artisan brewer lineup is equally exciting, with some of my personal favorites, including Beachwood Brewing, the Lagunitas Brewing Company, Eagle Rock Brewery, and Telegraph Brewing. Shout out to the El Segundo Brewing Co!

Tickets are still available, with three options:

• Burger Only ($55) - Unlimited food samples from over 35 burger vendors and access to the Vendor Village.
• General Admission ($75) - Unlimited food samples, craft beer samples, and access to the Vendor Village
• VIP ($100) - Early entry, VIP gift bag, and all General Admission benefits.

For a limited time, LA Weekly's Burgers and Beers is offering a Buddy Pack of 4 General Admission tickets for $199. It's a great way to save some money if you're going with friends.

Get your tickets today!

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Savor Santa Ana 2015 VIP Pass Giveaway!

Some exciting news for all you Hungry Pandas! Chubbypanda.com is giving out TWO VIP passes for the Savor Santa Ana food festival in Downtown Santa Ana this Thursday, July 23, 2015.

Each $45 VIP tasting package includes:

• 10 tasting tickets for food samples from participating restaurants.
• 2 drink tickets for beer, wine, of liquor at the patio lounge.
• Access to shorter VIP lines for all booths.

To enter:

1. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
2. Take a selfie of yourself looking super hungry and post it to Twitter, Instagram, or our Facebook page with the tags #HungryPandas, #SavorSantaAna, and #Giveaway. Include a link to this giveaway article in your posts and make sure you include @chubbypandablog so that we see your entry.  Each post to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook gives you an additional chance to win.
3. Share this article with all your friends!

Submissions for Chubbypanda.com's Savor Santa Ana 2015 VIP Pass Giveaway close at 11:59pm PST on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2015. The winner with the hungriest looking selfie will be announced the morning of Thursday, July 23rd, 2015. Your VIP passes to Savor Santa Ana can be picked up from VIP Check In after 5pm on the day of the event.

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