Today we were fortunate to be able to attend the Good Food and Wine Show which is on at the Brisbane Convention Centre. There are still two more packed out days of fun and food to attend, so be sure to get yourself down there this weekend.
As soon as we arrived we made our way to the Celebrity Theatre box office and were able to grab tickets to the Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris of Masterchef fame's cooking demonstration. This is free but you must have a prebooked seat, which you can either get with your original entry ticket purchase or head to the box office as soon as you are there on the day. We left it all up to luck and were thankfully able to grab tickets to it and were seated right down the front in the second row, prime viewing position!
Their cooking demonstration was introduced by Alastair McLeod, local chef extraordinaire of Brett's Wharf and Tank, who has also been on episodes of Ready Steady Cook. He was certainly Mr Excitement and full of beans, obviously a good choice to hype up the crowd.
Shortly after, Gary and George came out to roaring applause of course, and went through a seafood cooking demonstration, making a lobster moussaka, black bean topped oysters and tempura calamari. The show was pretty gimmicky, the crowd loved it and Gary and George certainly played up to their 'celebrity' status.
Afterwards we went to sus out the general exhibitors. Rookie error, we soon realised we should have brought our own wine glasses in order to take part in the hundreds of wine tastings from different exhibitors. No matter, they are available to purchase for $3 per glass, or $10 with glass and neck holder. We got caught up in the fun and decided to purchase one each.
You certainly don't need to eat before coming down to the show, as we filled ourselves right up with tasting all of the food on offer from different exhibitors, favourites being Barambah Organics and Luv-A-Duck duck products. We were able to taste beautiful marinated Barambah fetta (numerous times...) and mouthwatering roasted duck fat potatoes and roast duck shanks from Luv-A-Duck.
As previously mentioned, we definitely had numerous wine tastings as there were no shortage of winery exhibits, some larger areas dedicated to various regions such as the Granite Belt and Barossa Valley.
Other areas to check out were the Riedel Wine Theatre (free shows about wine tasting and food matching), the Sensology Cocktail class area, and the Nespresso coffee classes.
One bad thing about the whole day was trying to dodge overzealous shoppers with their grandma-shopping-trolleys, yes another rookie mistake was not realising that people would bring along wheeled trolleys to fill up with their shopping! Also, don't worry if you don't bring one along, they are available for purchase at the show... seriously. These trolleys were everywhere, and people liked to park them right in the most inconvenient places.
Our (small number compared to other people) purchases for the day were;
Mango Butter and Tomato Relish from the Kangaroo Valley Produce Company
Bondi Chai Latte
Barambah Organics Marinated Fetta
Sirromet Wines Pinot Gris x 2 (purchase a bottle of wine and you get a free Sirromet Winery tour and tasting!)
(Brisbane Devoured's tickets to attend were supplied courtesy of the Good Food and Wine Show)
It was so pack on a Friday morning! Unfortunately I got the back seats during the 'Gary and George' cooking show as well as Manu! But it was all fun! :)
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