China Live and Cal Mare named Winners of GREAT TASTE PRIZE: Culinary Tastemakers

 

China LIVE and Cal Mare named two of the three Winners of the GREAT TASTE PRIZE: Culinary Tastemakers, in the 9th Annual TASTE AWARDS.

China Live is created by restaurant entrepreneurs George Chen and Cindy Chen, and is based in the busy cross sections of San Francisco’s Chinatown and North Beach. China Live includes multiple floors of food and entertaining, with the ground floor featuring the Oolong Café, Market Restaurant & Bar, and Retail Marketplace, and the upper floor’s 8 Tables receiving multiple award nominations for restaurant of the year.

Cal Mare is the latest concept by restaurateur and celebrity chef Michael Mina, and is based in the Beverly Center of Los Angeles. Cal Mare is an homage to the coast of Italy and Southern California from chef/partner Adam Sobel in collaboration with Michael Mina and MINA Group. Located on the ground floor of the newly designed Beverly Center in Los Angeles, the restaurant celebrates the best of coastal Italian cuisine while featuring California’s bountiful ingredients. The menu highlights seafood from both the Mediterranean and Pacific Ocean, as well as fresh handmade pastas and brick oven pizzas.

The 3rd Winner of the GREAT TASTE PRIZE: Culinary Tastemakers, in the 9th Annual TASTE AWARDS will be announced shortly, and is also the venue for the Red Carpet Awards Dinner in West Hollywood.

360 Degree Food Festival: Eat Drink SF

Going to a food festival is always a great opportunity. Being able to test a new type of camera while there is basically icing on the cake. In this case, it was the Insta360 Nano. The Insta360 shoots pictures and HD video in 360 degrees. The images can be used in Virtual Reality (VR) goggles, as well as on sites such as YouTube.

A food festival like Eat Drink SF is the perfect place, because you have a wide variety of food and drink, and lot of people and places to capture.

We set up our camera at various partner tables around the event, and produced short 30 second 360 degree videos from each. The quality of the initial videos were impressive, although we have to admit that after editing, export, and upload to YouTube they did lose a fair amount of resolution.

If you couldn’t go, or even if you could, take a look at what we saw.

In the spotlight:

  1. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: REBBL
  2. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: Fine Cooking Magazine
  3. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: Blue Diamond, Almond Breeze
  4. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: Temple Rye
  5. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: China Live and Lillet
  6. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: Don Julio
  7. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: (name?)
  8. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: Tratto
  9. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: Lillet
  10. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: Mixologists
  11. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: House Spirits Distillery
  12. 360 View of Eat Drink SF: Blue Stem Brasserie

ABOUT EAT DRINK SF:
San Francisco’s premier food, wine, beer, and spirits festival. Eat Drink SF (fka SF Chefs) returns for its 9th year to celebrate the Bay Area’s world-class culinary community. The festival is four days of delicious events featuring our four signature Grand Tasting experiences that highlight 160+ restaurants and 70+ breweries, wineries, and distilleries throughout the weekend. Guests meet the area’s top chefs, taste their way through more than 35 creative bites from restaurants around the Bay Area (each Grand Tasting features different restaurants), enjoy unlimited pours of wine, beer, and cocktails, learn about wine in the SF Wine School’s classroom, watch demonstrations on the main stage, play giant lawn games in our Backyard Bites zone, and be part of this quintessentially San Francisco celebration of flavor.

Chefs take Diners to New Heights in Puerto Vallarta

One of the world’s exhilarating dining experiences, Dinner in the Sky comes to Casa Velas in Puerto Vallarta from January 28 – February 28, 2017. Groups of 22 adventurous guests will be lifted nearly 150 feet in the air by a crane, taking in breathtaking views of the property’s on-site golf course and beautifully polished grounds, Banderas Bay and Sierra Madre Mountains.

Guests at Dinner in the Sky can mingle with fellow diners during a one-hour experience consisting of a three course gourmet dinner menu designed by top chefs, including Mikel Alonso and Bruno Oteiza, disciples of Spanish superstar Juan Arzak and owners of Biko in Mexico City, regularly among the top 50 restaurants in the world on the San Pellegrino list. A complimentary cocktail hour precedes the dinner. When staying three nights at Casa Velas or its sister properties in Vallarta-Nayarit, guests enjoy special discounted rates for the experience.

A celebration of gastronomic innovation and excitement, Puerto Vallarta’s Dinner in the Sky costs $50 USD a seat when staying at Casa Velas or the nearby AAA Five Diamond Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit and $80 USD when staying at Velas Vallarta. An exciting happening in the Puerto Vallarta area, outside guests can enjoy the dinner for $242 USD on site or $170 pre-order, pending availability. Guests can reserve their space for two dinners Wednesday through Friday (beginning at 6 p.m. and again at 8 p.m.); Saturday and Sunday features three dinners (beginning at 5, 7 and 9 p.m.). A vegetarian menu is also available on request.

www.hotelcasavelas.com.

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