A Gourmet Downpour Garden Experience

As many of you know, I have a special place in my heart for festivals and experience that showcase food, wine and/or beer or a region or regions. When living in Vancouver, I had the chance to attend several really neat venues and festivals in Canada and the US. Some of my favourites include:

• Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival
• Seattle International Beer Festival
• Lunch at Miss Mary Bobo's in Lynchburg Tennessee (an absolute MUST if you are in the area)
  
• Slovakia House during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games
  

I hope to continue exploring the food and drink of Europe while over in Copenhagen. And, just my luck, I stumbled across the Copenhagen Cooking Festival that is taking place right now in my new city. This festival takes place over the last week of August and offers foodies a great opportunity to explore all aspects of Copenhagen's cooking culture; from special set course meals at local restaurants, including the current best restaurant in the world Nomo, to tapas tours of some of Copenhagen's more unique neighbourhoods, to crayfish festivals to wine tastings...this festival has it all!

In honour of Ben's birthday week, we selected a couple of events to attend. The first event was a gourmet hotdog competition in Tivoli Gardens. We chose this event because Tom and I share a love of exploring local street meats and neither of us had visited Tivoli Gardens. The second event (on Ben's actual birthday) is an organic beer tasting extravaganza at the Cap Horn .

Despite a late start to the hotdog event due to a torrential downpour, we were happy to see they wer estill serving hotdogs at over half of the booths. Competitors were required to supply 10 hotdogs for judging and at least 40 hotdogs for purchase by the general public. Proceeds from the event also all went to help a local charity. The first line we selected ended up being the creme de la creme hotdog line - we had a hotdog where the meat was foie gras! each hotdog cost 100 kr (I will let you do the currency conversion to see hwo crazy we are). Remember....for charity!

The next several booths we visited had much more reasonable hotdog prices of about 30 kr per dog. We sampled a traditional danish hotdog that was delish (and a lot more filling than the previous one) as well as two more gourmet dogs. Below are pictures of the final two gourmet dogs we sampled.

Notice the watermelon and egg on this one.

This hotdog had grapes and caviar on it. (note that I am hiding under a
tent because the rain came back and a wet hotdog is not good)

Vancouverites are probably wondering how the infamous Japa-dog would have fared with the tough European competition. Apparently there was a China-dog at the competition that was very popular that Ben and I did not have a chnace to sample. So...if the whole 'finding a job' thing does not work out for me perhaps I can just franchise a Japa-dog in Copenhagen. Any investors?

Here are a couple more photos of the line ups at the event, a general picture of Tivoli at night as well as the awesome hotdog we did not get a chance to sample.



The beer tasting took place on Wednesday. While it was an event advertised on the Copenhagen Cooking website, I was surprised to see there were only 3 other couples at the tasting. Thankfully there was another table on DSL (danish as a second language) folk, and the gentleman hosting the event was kind enough to repeat everything in English. the event focused on the brewing process of two organic beers that are made in denmark: Cap Horn (a lager especially brewed for the specific restaurant we were in) and Fynsk Forar ( a wheat beer made with elderflower).


A representative from the brewery explained the brew process to us. Ben and my previous visits to breweries such as Granville Island and Big Rock were useful in helping us understand the technical terms that the representative did not know in English. All in all it was a very good presentation and the two beers were excellent.

The beer tasting was followed by a traditional Danish meal of trout and carrots brazed in the Fynsk Forar beer. a big pot of new potatoes were also placed on the table for us to share. I guess new potatoes are the Danish equivalent of a french fry starch at a meal. This amazing bowl of potatoes was also endless...ensuring that you did not leave the table hungry.


All in all, we felt that the Copenhagen Cooking events we attended were well worth it. Next year we will be sure to sign up for some of the premiere events that sold out very quickly this year.