Prepare for rambling.

So, it happened!  Last Thursday evening the Connecticut Forum held Food For Thought, an evening of discussion with two titans of the food world, and the dude from Baltimore who makes cakes that explode and stuff on TV.

Ok, so maybe I’ve been a bit too hard on Chef Duff Goldman in the past.  I’ve actually always thought he was quite likable, even if his show can be entertaining fluff that ends up being kinda dull some (much?) of the time.  This, really, is probably not his fault as it’s really just his job to make cakes, which are admittedly pretty cool.  It’s Food Network who is in charge of making an entertaining show out of all of it.  It would probably also help if Food Network didn’t play Ace of Cakes 12 hours a day.

Duff took the stage in his trademark sneakers, ratty jeans, and hockey jersey, which I guess shouldn’t have come as a surprise but was still endearing.  Duff had some of the best moments of the evening, revealing that his meal the previous night was an Amtrak hot dog, commenting on the state of industrial cow farming, “fucking disgusting,” while still revealing that he wants his wedding cake to be made of sausage disks and spam.  Funny, insightful, likable, Duff was less out of place than I expected and really quite entertaining.

Tony, I think, knows why he would ever get invited to this sort of thing and pretty much delivered.  I’m a huge fan, I’ll admit.  I think No Reservations is one of the best things to ever air on TV, and I was a hooting and hollering as much as anyone when he took the stage.  The guy is a rock star, there’s no other way to describe someone just so, so, insufferably cool.  Above all else he was funny, and game and humble, and while nothing especially revelatory or surprising came out of his mouth I think that ended up being pretty beside the point.

That may also be my fault as a total fanboy - there’s only so many new things Tony could have said as someone who’s filmed and written so much.  When moderator Colin McEnroe asked if there was anything Tony wouldn’t eat I muttered “Chicken McNugget” under my breath before he replied with just that, and when asked about getting sick while shooting I just knew he was going to mention the likelihood of getting ill from the Radisson breakfast buffet compared to a street food noodle stand in Malaysia.

Alice Waters, alternately deified and maligned by many foodies but a living, breathing legend either way, was very much dreamy, gentle, ethereal, sometimes a bit scattered; in other words very much everything everyone already knows about Alice Waters.  If she were an actress she’d be anybody’s first casting choice for Mother Nature or perhaps some sort benevolent Grecian goddess.  Despite her way of speaking in long, flowing sentences that seem to float between ideas and thoughts and using her hands generously to fill in her ellipses, she was surprisingly effective in conveying her ideas compellingly, even if eating organically, seasonally, and locally had probably become eye-rollingly cliché concepts for much of the audience.

Waters most lit up the room when she got back to talking about real food, the inspiration she takes from what’s growing in the ground, and her passion for just wanting to feed and take care of the folks around her.  She did waffle here and there, like when Colin entertainingly needled her about the notorious cocaine scene at Chez Panisse in the 70’s.  While Waters remained coy Tony and Duff gamely took up the topic, with Duff saying that he’d seen cooks do lines in every restaurant kitchen he’s worked in.  This seemed to shock the audience (cocaine at The French Laundry, gasp!) in one of the better moments of the show.  Waters had a potentially cringe-y moment when she revealed that her guilty pleasure was…a bag of caramel corn someone gave her as a gift.  You could almost feel the room deflate at such a lame answer but she saved when she revealed she tossed it in the garbage to avoid eating the whole thing, only to dig it out of the garbage the next day to finish it off.

Lots of other stuff was said of course so for more coverage check out Colin McEnroe’s post over on To Wit to read some different takes on the evening, with pictures!.  The whole thing was a really great time and a thrill for me personally just to see some of my food heroes on stage.  Thanks to the CT Forum for all of it.