FoodBuzz Blogger Festival

 Last weekend, I ventured out to San Francisco for the second annual FoodBuzz Blogger Festival, a three-day celebration of good food, good wine, good beer, and the people who just can't get enough of all three.  This being my first blogger event, I didn't know quite what to expect, but it was an amazing weekend and the great people at Foodbuzz did a wonderful job of pulling it off.  I knew the food blogging community was pretty awesome, but having the chance to meet so many of the 350 bloggers who attended the conference was inspiring.  Attendees came from as far away as Bulgaria (Casey of Eating Gardening & Living in Bulgaria), had non-food-related interests as cool as playing in a rockabilly band (Sabrina of The Tomato Tart), and had blog topics that ran the gamut, from nutrition (Mellissa of A Fit and Spicy Life) to baking (Lindsey of Gingerbread Bagels) and everything in between.  Whether we wrote about healthy living or pure gluttony like me, we all came out to San Francisco share our love for food.

Foodbuzz did not skimp on the food at the festival.  After three days of stuffing myself in San Francisco, I found myself paying a little more attention to the nutrition blogs whose authors I met at the festival.  The first night of the festival was the Street Food Fair, which brought San Francisco's best food trucks to Fort Mason.  Among my favorite eats at this were the fried pork loin sandwich with chicharrones (pictured below) from 4505 Meats, the porchetta sandwich from RoliRoti, and the escargot lollipop from Spencer on the Go.

The following morning, I attended a couple of the blogger workshops held at the Sir Francis Drake hotel in Union Square.  While very short, both the sessions on photography and video blogging were informative and entertaining and were led by some very talented bloggers, with Marc of No Recipes and Laura of The Cooking Photographer leading the photography workshop and Pim of Chez Pim, John from Food Wishes, and Sabrina of RhodeyGirlTests leading the video session.

That afternoon, we all attended Taste Pavillion, a four-hour event at Metreon featuring an impressive spread of food and drinks from the festival's sponsors and local breweries, wineries, and artisan food makers.  With my hands (and stomach) full of beer, wine, and plates of food, my pictures from the Taste Pavillion were a little sloppy to say the least.

The final night of the festival was held at the Ferry Building and involved a cocktail hour followed by an excellent four-course dinner with wines to match each course from Bonny Doon Vineyard.  The dinner was very well-prepared, and I particularly enjoyed the seared scallops and perfectly cooked rack of lamb. 

Unfortunately, a hard downpour on Sunday convinced me to skip out a brunch on the final day of the festival, but that didn't stop me from being so happy that I decided to make the trip out to San Francisco.  With all the amazing people I met and great foods I ate, I will definitely try my best to return next year.