One Broad's Appetite

I'm going to be honest. I made two laps at Broad Appetit over the course of an hour and a half and did more talking than eating. I then spent the next three hours in the air-conditioned comfort of Bistro 27, eating, drinking and listening to Gypsy Roots play. I make no apologies for any of my behavior.

June's weather is too reliably hot for a large-scale cooking event featuring 100+ vendors with grills and warming tables. Three blocks is not enough space to try to cram 25,000 people, half of whom are pushing sunburnt children in strollers. Serving hot soup or heavy dishes = a really poor marketing plan. Those are my personal takeaways from today's event, and I've been to them all.

As for what I spent my $3 chunks of change on, we've already established in these very blog pages that I am a sucker for pork belly. Which means I couldn't resist the fried pork belly with Asian slaw from Six Burner. Fatty and tangy, yea man, and served by all those familiar faces from the front and back of the house whom I know so well.

If any one dish spoke to me today it was UR's crab, lobster and corn gazpacho. Cold. light and fresh-tasting, this is what I'm talking about wanting to eat on a hot day.

Likewise, I couldn't pass up the watermelon "soda" made by Julep's master mixologist Bobby, (who lured me in to tell me about the tequila tasting he knew I wouldn't want to miss). Unlike some drink offerings I heard about today, his was chilled and served in a large cup without an overabundance of ice and it was about the most refreshing taste you can imagine.

It was a lot like having a cup of the juices that run down your arm when you're eating a hunk of watermelon at a picnic. And while not a fermented beverage, it definitely fell right in line with my recent trend of drinking pink.

The award for brilliance goes to Bacchus for their homemade dark chocolate and strawberry ice creams, a real mood lightener in today's tropic-like heat. I can attest to their strawberry being heavenly with loads of strawberry chunks throughout.

It was easy to pass up on Acacia's softshell sliders because of my recent bagged lunch from there of that very dish except in full-size format, raved about here. Three dollars for a couple of bites of that stellar taste combination can't compare to an entire baguette of softshells and slaw with a side and dessert for $10, so I didn't bother with that line today.

My friend and I were the first bar customers to escape the heat at 27 and passed several very enjoyable hours after all that hot hullabaloo, drinking Gavi di Gavi and Vino Verde. By 3:00 we were feeling peckish (and "tipsy in the afternoon" if you want to listen to my friend's assessment) and decided to eat up. She had a Ceasar salad with salty anchovies and sauteed calamari in a tomato sauce over creamy polenta while I had a bowl of mussels in white wine cream sauce, soaked up by a whole lot of crusty bread.

Before you question why I would sit in a restaurant (and a place I frequent often) rather than availing msyelf of further sampling possibilities at the festival, allow me to remind you of the purpose of Broad Appetit. It was conecived to bring people downtown and affordably introuduce them to the wealth of independent restaurants in RVA, in hopes that they might return to the city for a full meal at a later date.

That's a lesson so firmly ingrained in me already that one could almost say I preach it in my daily blog ramblings about my endless eating experiences, almost always within the city limits.

Broad appetite? Hell, this broad already has one.