Three Her Campus American foodies spent one Saturday morning at the most glorious food expo The District has ever seen. For the tenth year in a row, MetroCooking DC returned to the Washington Convention Center on October 24 and 25 for a weekend of culinary exploration. Celebrity chefs hit the stage for cooking demos and Q&A sessions, vendors handed out samples of the tastiest creations and attendees voted on the best of the best DC BBQ.
Highlights from Saturday’s events included the wine, beer and spirits garden where attendees sampled The District’s best brews and wines and the BBQ bash where local BBQ joints sampled their best grilled meats and sauces. Both events required an additional purchase, and visitors had the option to vote on their favorite samples.
Saturday’s main event was headliner Giada de Laurentiis’s cooking demo, where HCAU’s very own Tamara Young was selected to assist in cooking. De Laurentiis’s cooking demo was a very unique experience. She had assistants prep the space for her, and once she hit the stage she didn’t really cook anything herself. De Laurentiis grabbed members from the audience to assist her, and spent her time onstage guiding the cooks and answering audience questions.
The first dish de Laurentiis prepared was a lamb dish, which looked incredible as it literally fell off the bone once completed. Audience members lined up to directly ask de Laurentiis questions. Giada’s hopeful second season of Giada in Italy was discussed in detail, and audience members invited Giada to film in their own homes. She discussed some of her favorite dishes to cook, and some of her least, and was more than kind and honest with those who asked her questions.
At one point a 10-year-old girl went up to the microphone to ask a question, and de Laurentiis was so impressed she invited the girl to join her on stage. The 10-year-old was offered the opportunity to select another audience member to cook with her, and HCAU’s Tamara was selected from the crowd. Tamara and the young girl helped Giada make the most delicious traditional tomato sauce, and the HCAU girls got a VIP taste, thanks to Tamara. She even got a photo with Giada, and the experience of cooking on stage with one of the culinary world’s greatest.
Other happenings included taste talks, a pop-up cooking school, VIP meet and greets, James Beard cooking stage and a book store.
Keeping up with classes and extracurriculars kept the HCAU foodies from returning for Sunday’s events, but the food expo continued on. The Grand Tasting Pavilion allowed for over 50 local restaurants to hand out samples of their signature dishes, and Michael Symon headlined Sunday’s activities with his own cooking demo for the crowd to enjoy.
Photo Credits: 1 Author’s own