My nephew Conor works at a non-profit agency in Madison called Reap that is all about local, organic and humanely raised food. Their annual benefit is on Sunday nights and that’s not a good night for me to run up to Madison but somehow I did manage it this year and I’m really glad I did. It was a lavish food festival with little blather about the mission and cause. I hate that shit. Everyone there is already on the same page and there’s no need to explain it all to us again. We (sisters, brothers in law, some [adult] children) were paired with Chef Francesco Mangano from the Osteria Papavero. The food was awesome. For the most part. I am not that big of a fan of fish and while octopi are not fish, they taste fishy and I definitely do not like mussels.
The first course was foie gras. Locally grown and it was amazing. I don’t know how they do that humanely and I am not going to question it. But I am sourcing my foie gras from where ever that guy got it. Next was octopus and mussels, “50-hour octopus,” to be precise. I don’t care how many hours it took. It still tasted fishy. I’m not sure how this could qualify as locally sourced and I thought octopus were endangered. In any case, I won’t need to be sourcing it anywhere so I’m not worrying about it.
The third course was some egg filled ravioli that was really fabulously awesome-o-rama. We finished up with beef cheeks which were also really really good. Dessert was an assortment of things downstairs in the main hall (where my sister and brother in law were married about 40 billion years ago). I don’t really care for sweet stuff that much but I mistakenly ate a macaron, waste of stomach space and calories.
Then I had the drive home.
