Foodievents

What You Missed at Pebble Beach Food & Wine, 2012 Edition

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The view from the Inn at Spanish Bay on Friday.

This past weekend, a legion of celebrity chefs, sommeliers, winemakers, well-heeled foodinistas, food writers, and various hangers-on descended on Carmel for the fifth annual Pebble Beach Food & Wine. In case you’ve never been, or drooled over slideshows from previous years, it’s a dressed-up tasting-tent affair with big-name sponsors like Lexus and Stella Artois, and lots and lots of wine. Also, there are seminars with plenty of wine, and dinners at which buckets of wine are served. Then there are after-parties with vodka, and even more wine.

Marcia Gagliardi, of Tablehopper fame, pinch-hit for us on this one, and she reports that many of the weekend’s events were sold out. “The economy’s bouncing back,” she observes, and says that the tents were very full and the mood was pretty celebratory. She brings us some fun photos of the festivities, including Friday night’s star-studded tribute to Thomas Keller, and pastry chef (and soon-to-be New Yorker) Elizabeth Falkner standing in front of someone’s ridiculously huge, yellow, tricked-out, obnoxious SUV**.

Earlier:
Watching Daniel Boulud Play a Video Game, and the Rest of the Highs and Lows of Pebble Beach Food & Wine

**Update: We have it on good authority that the obnoxious yellow truck belongs to…no huge shocker here…Guy Fieri, who supposedly is running around with a Kid Rock-style entourage that includes at least one dwarf.

It’s always sunny in Pebble Beach … at least in April. This was the view from the terrace at the Inn at Spanish Bay, and that’s Anne Burrell at the bottom right.
Chef Daniel Boulud was sipping wine and manning his table at Thursday night’s opening tasting event.
Boulud was serving a veal Portugaise with boudin noir.
Iron Chef Morimoto: always a good-time guy.
At Friday’s tribute to Thomas Keller, the guest of honor greeted guests at the luxe tent set up for the occasion. And that’s protégé Grant Achatz in the background.
Celebrity chef Tyler Florence and wife Tolan were in attendance.
The menu from the Keller tribute.
Achatz and Keller posed with the chefs who prepared the meal: Ron Siegel (Ritz-Carlton, S.F., not pictured), Boulud, Michael White (NYC’s Marea), Nancy Oakes (Boulevard), Francois Payard, and another Keller protégé, Corey Lee of S.F.’s Benu.
Inside the tents on Saturday, fashions were all over the place.
Love this guy.
Celebrity pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini was on hand.
… so was Anne.
Texas chef Tim Love served up a carnitas taco with fresh veggies and guacamole.
There was a mountain of cheese to go with the buckets of wine. Note the empty plates of samples.
Saturday night brought several more dinners, including a ‘An Italian Love Affair’ event featuring Top Chef alum (and soon-to-be-star of Life After Top Chef) Fabio Viviani of L.A.’s Firenze Osteria.
Also, Nancy Silverton contributed a course.
And last but certainly not least, here’s Elizabeth Falkner standing in front of the obnoxious, gargantuan SUV/truck thing that someone drove to the event. Can anybody say ’foochebag’? Update: HA! Not surprisingly, that yellow truck apparently belongs to Guy Fieri whose other car used to be a yellow Lamborghini, until it got stolen.
What You Missed at Pebble Beach Food & Wine, 2012 Edition