Food Festival in Richmond

Ages ago, on June 6th, I went to Richmond, Va to visit my bestest friend in the whole wide world because I love her and she's my favorite and she's beautiful and smart... and Oh yeah, there was a food festival that weekend!

 Grace!  Ain't she a doll?

The event was called Broad Appetit.  Over 50 Richmond restaurants participated.  There were booths for blocks and each generous plate or portion was only $3.  Here are my favorites:

First up was dessert!  These were the first great macarons I've ever had.  These are soft, tender cookies with a crisp outershell sandwiching a creamy middle.  Typically the cookies are made of ground almonds, but these particular ones also contained hazelnut and pistachio meal. 

On the left was the Passionfruit with Milk Chocolate and on the right was Pistachio and Bittersweet Chocolate.  Both were to perfectly structured (crisp shell, good feet, tender middles) and utterly delightful.   I wouldn't expect anything less from someone trained by Pierre Herme himself.  However, I preferred the Passionfruit for its intensity.  It was tart! and I wasn't expecting that from a cookie. 

 

They come from Petites Bouchees.  The owner, Veronica also has a blog where I learned that she is also Filipino!  Very inspiring :)  

 

We had so much fantastic food!  There was a salmon reuben, samosa, fried green tomatoes, Thai flavored pork belly, soft shell crab sandwich, goat cheese filled fried squash blossoms, grapefruit tartlet, and grilled lamb.  

 

 

Mmmmm...food memories.  Unfortunately, I'm a terrible Richmonder (mostly because I live 2 hours away), and I really didn't pay attention to where all this food came from. I guess I'll just have to go back again and again and again.  Pity. Ha!

Speaking of where food comes from my favorite vendor at the festival (other than Petite Bouchee) didn't even cook anything at all.  This school bus is a farmers market on wheels called Farm to Family. The bus makes trips all over town and stop mostly at school parking lots.  And they just recently opened up a real store.  I'm friends with them on Facebook and all of their updates make me wish I lived in Richmond just so that I could shop there.  The concept is just so fantastic - everybody, regardless of what part of town you live in, should have access to good, fresh, local food. 

I bought a box of strawberries from farmer/ bus driver, Mark.  The day was hot, so the fragrance of these sweet gems were just too overpowering and I succumbed.  They were a perfect ending to a delicious day.