Mouthing Off

Yesterday, I got a preview of the F&W Classic in Aspen: meeting legendary Italian winemaker Roberto Conterno in NYC. Now I'm here in Aspen and it's even more exciting. This is the 27th anniversary of the festival, which is a mix of genius chef demos, wine seminars and a whole lot of parties. Every minute there’s something amazing going on; I’ve made a huge effort to pick three of my most anticipated events.

Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton preparing dishes from Osteria Mozza: Batali’s seminars are invariably some of Aspen’s best and most entertaining; this year, the amazing Silverton will help him prepare dishes from their L.A. restaurant, including spaghetti with garlic and guanciale.

Sommelier Challenge: The great Lettie Teague, F&W wine columnist, pits four of the country’s elite sommeliers (including Bobby Stuckey of Boulder’s Frasca Food and Wine and Jordan Salcito of NYC’s Gilt) against each other to see who is best at selling wines. It’s not unlike watching Britain’s Got Talent, minus the singing and dancing.

Classic Quickfire: On Sunday morning @ 10.30 (not too early, thank goodness—Saturday night is party night in Aspen), Top Chef season 4 winner Stephanie Izard will face off against Top Chef season 5 winner Hosea Rosenberg. They’ll each have a superstar assistant. I have my own ideas about who will win; let’s see if I’m right.

Nine days left until the world's premiere food event, the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, June 19-21. For those still looking for tickets, F&W, QVC and KitchenAid have partnered up to offer an exclusive package to Extra viewers that includes round-trip airfare for two, a three-night hotel stay, tickets to the Food & Wine Publisher's Party, front-row seats to the Classic Quickfire Challenge, a QVC gift card worth $1,000 and amazing appliances from KitchenAid. Check out Extratv.com to learn how to enter the contest, and tune in to QVC at 11 a.m. (EST) on June 21 for a live broadcast from Aspen.

While the rock stars of the food and wine worlds were hanging out in Aspen last weekend, another group of rockers gathered on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, for Bonnaroo, a four-day Woodstock-esque music festival that brings together environmentally conscious performers like Pearl Jam and Jack Johnson.This year’s festival set new standards for sustainability. Diane Hatz, founder and director of Sustainable Table, the nonprofit responsible for the Eat Well Guide, blogged daily from the event and called me today to share some green highlights:

* The festival hired a sustainability coordinator to help reduce consumption.

* Bonnaroo’s goal is to buy 75 percent of all food it sells from local sources within three to five years, and festival organizers provided food vendors with a list of local farmers they could work with.

* An organic café was selling fair-trade coffee, organic fruits and vegetables, arepas and jerk chimichangas while vendors hawked organic, vegetarian corn dogs and organic funnel cake (festival-goers could pick up leftover oil from the funnel-cake fryer to fuel their biodiesel cars).

* Organic beer from Vermont brewers Orlio and Stone Mill was on tap.

* Sustainable Table volunteers were barbecuing on a solar-powered oven.

* A Solar Stage hosted bands as well as panel discussions on the state of our planet.

I've been coming to the Classic for eight years, and I think it gets better each time. Here, some people who have made my weekend even more interesting:

1. Top Chef Hung Huynh and Jacques Pépin. Each year, the Culinary Institute of America  sends 10 of their top students to the Classic to assist at the culinary demos. Last night, Beringer sponsored a party in their honor, and Jacques Pépin gave an inspiring speech, reminding the students chefs (or baby chefs, as we sometimes call them) to stick to their craft (and not aspire to TV fame), hone their skills, and say nothing more than "Yes, chef" for the next six or seven years they'll be training in professional kitchens. Hung, who was standing in front of me, nodded his head emphatically the entire time, and when it was over, he turned to his companion and said, "He's so good!" It's nice to see that TV fame hasn't diminished his respect for his craft in any way at all.

2. The volunteers. This year, I am most thankful to the volunteers in the Grand Tasting Tent who are tirelessly (and in some cases, even smilingly) manning the trash disposal. All throughout the tent are sets of three garbage bins: one for composting, one for recycling Fiji bottles, and one for plain old trash. At each station, there's a volunteer assisting people sort their trash. Not the most glamorous job, but so great. And it's made me realize that true garbage is kind of a bummer.

3. Restaurateur extraordinaire Drew Nieporent. Ok, flying into Aspen in a prop plane is no party, but this year, I thought I was done for when we crammed onto the tiny plane and proceeded to take off in 40+ mph winds. The saving grace (besides my colleagues who kindly let me clutch them in a death grip with each air pocket) was Drew Nieporent, who sat in front of us and talked cheerfully the whole way, even when we hit such a big air pocket that his water flew up and spilled all over him. Thank you, Drew. I hope you're on my plane next year.

Last night my colleague Emily Kaiser and I gondola'd to the top of Aspen Mountain for a dinner benefiting the Wholesome Wave Foundation, the 2008 recipient of F&W's Grow for Good campaign. We enjoyed a local-minded meal prepared by chefs Roy Yamaguchi, Hung Huyhn (Top Chef's 2007 winner), Ryan Hardy and Michel Nischan, who founded Wholesome Wave last year.

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My Aspen Food & Wine Classic officially started at City Market on Thursday afternoon, when I bumped into NYC's Momofuku All-Star team (sans David Chang but including Rusty Knot's Quino Baca) coming out of the grocery store with cartons of cigarettes, cases of beer, dozens of frozen pizzas and a token grapefruit and apple they said was for the bartender. I decided to put a tracking device on them because, no doubt, the late-night party would be happening in their vicinity. Unfortunately, I lost them.

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Top Chef Hung Huynh and F&W's Gail Simmons

Our F&W Classic in Aspen doesn't get going in earnest until tomorrow, but last night a healthy percentage of early arrivals gathered at the subterranean bar Belly Up to watch the Top Chef Finale like the food tv groupies we are. The party was sponsored by, fittingly enough, the Rums of Puerto Rico. As I sipped on a refreshing Bacardi Superior with lavender syrup and tonic, I tried to look graceful while scrounging for a seat. The place was packed like it was the Super Bowl, folks crammed into tables and along the bars to watch the show on the big screen, everyone from our own Dana Cowin and Ray Isle to chefs like Michel Nischan  and Andrew Shotts (the 2 both said they'd watch a lot more of the show if they weren't so busy cooking, and were glad to have a chance to watch the finale uninterrupted).

Top Chef judges Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi hadn't yet landed, but the fantastic Gail Simmons led the crowd in an informal poll: Stephanie won the warmest applause, Lisa many boos. Once the show started, it was tricky to hear over the chatter (Frank Bruni's take-down of Ago was the topic of the night). I snuck down to the speakers to hear what Richard Blais was teaching Eric Ripert over that steaming pot of liquid nitrogen, when I ran into last season's winner, Hung Huynh. During the commercial break before the judges' table he told me a little about the new restaurant he has planned, and his pick for the winner.

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They’re skiing in Aspen today. At least that’s the rumor, that there’s one ski run open and up to three feet of snow on the mountain (I’ve spotted some on this live cam). I have to wait until tomorrow to see it for myself.

Ski or no ski (I’m bringing my boots just in case), I’m excited for this year’s Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. Aside from the dinners and special events, the seminar lineup is one of the best ever. Here are some highlights:

• A chocolate and wine-pairing seminar conducted by our own Ray Isle and chocolatier Andrew Shotts. Usually these types of tastings are snore fests, but Shotts has created some of the most gonzo, sweet-savory dishes imaginable. Chocolate covered pork rinds, anyone?

• Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi cooking side-by-side using similar ingredients, but in their own respective styles. Think Top Chef meets Iron Chef.

• Grill guru Steven Raichlen’s around-the-globe barbecue seminar. It’s impossible to spend an hour with Raichlen and not learn 50 new things.

• The American Idol of wine: The 3rd annual Sommelier’s Challenge, in which Lettie Teague pits four of the world’s best sommeliers against each other as they try to be the ultimate wine geek. 

• David Chang’s whole hog tasting. ‘Nuff said.