I have plans for Saturday, now – Chef Mark has invited me to help him do the tasting at this weekend’s Wine and Dine for the Arts benefit at the Crowne Plaza in Albany. The tasting runs from 1-4pm, and tickets are $50 per person (available on the event website).
There will be photos forthcoming – Chef Mark instructed me to show up at his restaurant “at 11am, with a camera and casual pants”. Woo-hoo!
Life at Goal 
Excellent!! Have a fantastic time.
I am so bummed I had to miss this. There was a bit of a family melt-down that needed my attention.
At least I got to view your photo stream.
Actually, that may have made it worse.
Sniff.
I didn’t get to walk around too much, but it seemed to be somewhat similar to the Harvest Fest that the Desmond does in December. The only difference is that the food today was strictly from restaurants, and not from other types of purveyors. And the wineries/liquor companies seemed to outnumber the restaurants by at least 2-to-1.
I haven’t gotten around to captioning most of the photos, because I’m exhausted from standing all day! When I do the full post tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the arugula gnocchi with roasted cherry tomatoes and caramelized ciopollinis that we served. Lord, it was tasty.
I’m sure the event will be returning next year – they said they had more than 800 people at the two tastings, and 300 people for the dinner tonight. A success, I’d say.