Katie and I had the great pleasure of meeting nearly 30 food bloggers from around the country on Friday. They were in town for the BlogHer conference taking place at Navy Pier, and were nice enough to invite us to join them for dinner at Lao Sze Chuan in Chinatown.
At first, Katie was going to go solo, but I was able to get off work early and join her. We were on schedule until traffic kept Katie from catching her train. I jumped on the expressway and drove to the burbs to pick her up, and we quickly headed back up to the city. Unfortunately we got there 45 minutes after everyone else, so we had to grab our own table and quickly order some food. Several women were nice enough to come chat with us while we ate, including Alanna Kellogg, Claire Blaustein, Anne-Marie Nichols, and Katie Khoury.
I also got to meet a couple of other Chicago bloggers, Gemma Petrie who writes one of my favorite blogs, Pro Bono Baker, as well as Terry Boyd of Blue Kitchen. They’ve mentioned getting other Chicago food bloggers together for another dinner, which would be pretty damn fun.
Hopefully, the food will be a little less spicy next time. Katie’s Ma Po Tofu was so hot that it nearly brought her to tears. I of course took this as a challenge, but even I had to admit that it was almost too spicy to enjoy. I ordered, on a whim, the bok choy with black mushrooms. Mine was much more edible, but I was full of bok choy in no time. Eating some of the deep fried bread with cream sauce probably didn’t help matters.
What I found most interesting was the cross section of people that food blogging brings to the table. These are people who not only love food, but have experienced so much that at times, we felt out of our element. Here we were two kids from flat-lands Illinois, a modicum of life experience, talking to people who have seen the world, grown their own vegetables, even packed their own meats. But, ultimately none of that mattered as we were welcomed in with open arms.
I want to thank Alanna for inviting us. While we didn’t get a chance to talk one on one with everybody, it was still a great treat to be introduced to such interesting people. I can’t wait to get some time (curse you work…and Harry Potter) to check out all their blogs. And I hope you do the same. I’ve included a list of everyone who came out Friday night.
You can check out photos of the evening, taken by the daughter of Susan Voisin, over at her Flickr page.
Lisa Anali
http://www.analisfirstamendment.blogspot.com/
Tanya Taylor
http://www.iateapie.net/
Joanna Miller
http://myvegetableblog.wordpress.com/
Katie Khoury
http://littlespatula.blogspot.com/
Gemma Petrie
http://www.probonobaker.com
Terry Boyd
http://bluekitchen.wordpress.com/
Jane Goldman
http://www.chow.com/
Elise Bauer
http://www.elise.com/recipes/
Nicole Hamaker
http://pinchmysalt.com/
Genie Gratto
http://inadvertentgardener.wordpress.com/
Kat Markert
http://kungfoodie.com/
Shuna Fish Lydon
http://eggbeater.typepad.com/
Claire Blaustein
http://cookthink.com/blog/
Lauren Perdue
http://austinist.com/
Tery Spataro and Aliza Sherman
http://dailyeats.com/
Janice McDermott
http://inquisitivepalate.com/
Susan Voisin
http://www.fatfreevegan.com/
Nupur Kittur
http://www.onehotstove.blogspot.com/
Anne-Marie Nichols
http://mamarant.blogs.com/mamacooks/
Kalyn Denny
http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/
Jasmine
http://cardamomaddict.blogspot.com/
Ruth Daniels
http://onceuponafeast.blogspot.com/
Alanna Kellogg
http://kitchen-parade.blogspot.com/
Béatrice Peltre
http://www.latartinegourmande.com
Filed under: announcements, Chicago Links, dinner, restaurants
[...] City to Moline, Illinois on Friday morning for a 7 a.m. flight to Chicago, hit BlogHer all day and a food bloggers’ dinner Friday night, get up at 3:15 a.m. to catch the shuttle to O’Hare for flight number two into D.C., [...]
[...] 7, 2008 Exasperation , Food , Friends , Iowa City , Weather At BlogHer ’07, I attended a fabulous dinner with a group of other food bloggers, some of whom attended the conference and some of whom live in the area. At the table that night, [...]
It was delightful meeting you! What a wonderful evening. It would be great if we could organize to meet again.
Mike and Katie,
It was great to meet the two of you. I agree with you about the spiciness…I also had tears in my eyes. It would be a lot of fun to get together with all of the Chicago food bloggers. I’m looking forward to chatting with everyone again.
Mike and Katie—It was great to meet you, even briefly. Let’s definitely get some Chicago food bloggers together for dinner. Sorry the food was so spicy—I guess Marion and I have just become accustomed to it.
It was so nice chatting with you both – I was actually impressed that I could speak coherently, as my lips were tingling from the spices.
I hope you will start organizing food blogger dinners in Chicago – perhaps then we can pick up the thread here in DC.
[...] City to Moline, Illinois on Friday morning for a 7 a.m. flight to Chicago, hit BlogHer all day and a food bloggers’ dinner Friday night, get up at 3:15 a.m. to catch the shuttle to O’Hare for flight number two into D.C., [...]
It was great getting to meet you, if only briefly. I ordered that same tofu dish, and man it was hot!
Hi Mike & Katie,
It was so great that you DID make it in, didn’t realize you’d had quite so much trouble! And it was such fun to hear your, um, ‘horror’ stories (and no, I don’t mean the tofu). And you know, until you said here, I’d never have characterized you as anything but just ‘one of the gang’, no more, no less, no different which means, of course, completely (and occasionally madly) united by food.
Thanks for making the trip in!
AK
I was so sorry I didn’t really get to chat with the two of you. It’s wonderful that the Chicago food bloggers are going to continue to get together. So glad you could come, and hope to see you another time.
That food was spicy wasn’t it? But it was really good too! It was nice meeting you and Katie!
This a great roundup and a very nice blog that you have here! Oh and my real first name is Lisa, but Anali is my aka and not my last name, just to clarify. ; )