Portland Taste of the Nation 2014

This past Tuesday, I was lucky enough to attend Portland's Taste of the Nation food festival, a gathering of some of Oregon's best chefs, winemakers, brewers and distillers to raise money and awareness for Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign. No Kid Hungry is an effort to eliminate childhood hunger by providing children from low-income families access to nutritional school meals and other related education programs. Every ticket purchased for Taste of the Nation helps the campaign.

A LOT of my favorite restaurants, distilleries, and wineries were there at the jam-packed event (held in Portland's ever-so-hip Crystal Ballroom), providing various bites and tastes:

The cool part was that, not only did the restaurants step up and provide snacks, a lot of famous and big name chefs were actually on-site themselves to help out and hand out food. Pictured below is this old post of mine featuring some of their killer cocktails) serving up soup dumplings and famed bartender Brandon Wise, currently serving up epic cocktails at Imperial and Portland Penny Diner:

The last picture up top? I think I already instagrammed this, but that dish was probably one of my favorites from the night. Truffle oil mac and cheese from Grassa. Simple and delicious and decadent, all at the same time.

And the bites below are:

• fresh pan-fried latkes with smoked salmon from I participated in their No Kid Hungry's "Baking a Difference" campaign and whipped up some Mexican chocolate rolls. My recipe was featured in their e-cookbook (which you can I've got photos from last year!


• Finally, a shameless plug (please forgive me) — like the photos you see? You can now hire me as a food photographer! Check out more of my pictures on my ever-burgeoning portfolio and email me for more information.

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