Not all chefs are created equal. And more than 60 of the most wildly unequal will be channeling all their disproportionate gifts to festivalgoing palates all weekend for Pebble Beach Food & Wine's third iteration of astronaut-class flavor exploration. In fact, it's already started: The founder's dinner has poured out $200,000-plus worth of private-collection wine, pairing three wines with each of nine courses by the likes of Angela Pinkerton, Thomas Keller, above, and Walter Manzke, and the chefs are playing Pebble Thursday (after a champagne toast, of course).I'll be attending a fraction of the proceedings—including Charlie Trotter and Ming Tsai-Blue Ginger demos, a Krug tasting with a Krug presiding (read: very rare) and the way-too-much-goodness tour de force that is the Grand Tastings. Last year we envisioned what some of the possible pairings there would be like (hint: it's nutzoid...read that here); this year you can follow what some of the universe's top tastemakers are doing live as I post pictures and commentary from my mobile from the various events.
Not long after taking in a Keller demo at Spanish Bay, I got to track arguably the globe's top toque down in the Per Se kitchen to talk sourcing and sustainability. Check that out here.
More flavor: The Weekly wrote the definitive coming-out piece for PBF&W with a cover story on the eve of the original. This week in the Weekly print edition I described the strategy Dan Dunn, Playboy cocktail and spirits columnist advocates to survive such absurd amounts of sublime stimulation (and wine drinking—more than 250 top rung operations will represent). It's a como se dice classic DD breakdown. His Playboy website is worth checking out, as is his description of what it's like to be a professional drinker in an interview with BroBible.
