Buick Discovery Tour Rides into New Jersey

Buick was kind of enough to invite some of the Boozy Burbs team to experience their Buick Discovery Tour, where Buick engages attendees about their brand through food and wine. This three-plus hour event is being held at stops around the country and they made their local NYC metro stop in nearby Morristown.

The event is broken up into four food/drink modules and one module where attendees could test drive any current Buick model of their choosing. Along with Food & Wine magazine, Buick brought in three celebrity chefs for demos and a wine tasting expert. Each module was approximated 30 minutes long.

When we first got there, there was plenty of food and drink waiting for us. Our favorite part of every party is the cocktail hour, Buick didn’t disappoint.

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Some food before the event

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Olive Oil Tasting Station (Don’t mind if we do)

The test drive was something we found much cooler than expected. We realize that since Buick was footing the bill for this event, cars would enter the discussion at one point during the tour. The staff ushered us outside where we were given a quick (probably extra quick since it was cold and lightly snowing) synopsis of the current 2013 Buick lineup.

Test Drive
[photo credit: Intersport]

We were greeted with a parking lot full of current model Buicks with keys in the ignition and guides to ride with us to make sure we didn’t get lost! We chose to go for a ride in the Buick Lacrosse, the same car Shaq drives in one of their recent commercials.

http://youtu.be/bOyiHUpSPT8

Now on to the food… Module one was with Chef George Mendes, chef of New York’s Aldea. In 2011 he was name one of Food & Wine Best New Chefs. Coming from a Portuguese family, Chef Mendes’s food shows much of that influence. He demonstrated cooking a Bacalhau à Brás, which is a traditional salted cod scrambled with egg, crispy potato and black olive. We’re not sure if we have the patience to wait 4 days for the cod to ready from salting, but it’s always neat to eat a dish that’s served at a Michelin-starred restaurant. View Recipe (PDF)

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Salted Cod

Next was a “Progessive Pastry” module with Ben Roche of Baume & Brix in Chicago. Baume & Brix uses molecular gastronomy techniques to create unique flavor profiles and dishes. He demonstrated how to make his Yuzu Chiboust using a bunch of ingredients we’d never heard of and many steps using a large range of tools we don’t own (It’s clearly a complicated dish to prepare). Chef Roche admitted that just having the name of the dish “Yuzu Chiboust” on his dessert menu would amount to it never getting ordered. Intelligently they describe it as a coconut rice pudding with pineapple and grapefruit garnished with caraway ice cream and fried noodles. Quite a few textures and flavors happening in one dish, but a very interesting and surprisingly refreshing dessert.

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The wine tasting portion was hosted by Wine Expert Michael Green. As much a showman as he is a Jedi Wine Master, Mr. Green gave simple advice to both novice and advanced wine drinkers.

The finale of the night was Greek-American chef Michael Psilakis. He spent some time talking about food and family and how it’s extremely important in his life. His demo was of a Gyro Spiced Slider, a miniature variation of the burger he sells at his NYC outpost Kefi. The sliders were served with onions and Tsatziki sauce on a potato bun. The Tsatziki had a spicy kick that was so delicious, it would be worth making it for other dishes as well. View Recipe (PDF)

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Gyro Spiced Slider

It’s always easy to get excited about award-winning chefs and their food. Special thanks to the team at Buick Events for thinking of us and letting us be apart of it.

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