P.O.S.H., one of my go-to spots for cool kitchen stuff, is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post. And the first annual Cancun – Riviera Maya Wine & Food Festival plans to change the way you think about Mexican cuisine.
Open the kitchen cabinets of any food blogger and chances are you’ll find stacks of mismatched china. We’re always on the hunt for interesting individual plates, bowls, platters and other props for our food photography. Flea markets, thrift stores and even IKEA are all prime hunting grounds. One place where I reliably have good luck is P.O.S.H., an artful jumble of restaurant china, hotel silver and vintage finds from European flea markets in Chicago’s River North neighborhood.
P.O.S.H. also has an online store, in case you can’t get to Chicago. For more on this charming shop—including a photo gallery and a link to its website—check out my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.
Cancun – Riviera Maya Wine & Food Festival announced
If you want to launch a major wine and food festival, lining up the most famous chef in the world is a good place to start. Yes, Ferran Adrià, legendary chef/owner of the recently shuttered El Bulli, will be the guest of honor at the first annual Cancun – Riviera Maya Wine & Food Festival next March.
The announcement was made at an event hosted by the Mexico Tourism Board at Mexique here in Chicago last week. Cancun has long been known as a popular tourist destination. Now it’s upping its culinary game, seeking to attract a whole new audience to more than its beautiful beaches. The wine and food festival, scheduled for March 15 – 18, 2012, will celebrate “star chefs of the Americas,” with more than 30 chefs from Mexico, Latin America, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Latin America, the United States and Canada. The festival will include dinners, wine tastings, cooking demonstrations, panel discussions and, it being Cancun, plenty of parties.
Mexique was the perfect venue to announce the festival in Chicago. Chef/owner Carlos Gaytan specializes in modern Mexican cuisine with a French influence. He dazzled us with numerous inventive small plates, but the one I would push expectant women out of the way to get more of was little toasts topped with steak tartare, pico de gallo and impossibly tiny, impossibly cute fried quail eggs. We’re going back for dinner this weekend to see what else Chef Carlos has up his culinary sleeve.
For more information about the Cancun – Riviera Maya Wine & Food Festival, visit the official website.
Interesting, I’ve never been to P.O.S.H but now I’ll definitely take a look!
I think you’ll like it, Cara. Even on the rare occasions I don’t buy anything, I have fun poking around and seeing all their cool finds.
I nodded knowingly though your first paragraph because you got me! I had just made a post about a great item I picked up in an old shop in Geneva back in April, when I got back to browsing your blog and found this post. If I ever get to Chicago, P.O.S.H. will be at the top of my list of must-go places. This is my idea of heaven. I followed your link to shop online and they have some great stuff, but nothing beats the thrill of the hunt in an actual store of treasures, or flea market. Thanks for the tip. Love your blog!
Thanks, Stacy! P.O.S.H. is a cool shop, but living in Paris as you now do, you can go direct to the source, seeking out flea markets and such in that fabulous city. In fact, those quaint (to us in America) enamel door number signs in the photo above are available in hardware stores there. And from what I remember of even shopping in the department stores, small kitchen appliances either look impossibly, wonderfully sleek and contemporary or else like they were designed in the 1940s. Both have their charm, to me.
Nice post. I sell travel to the Cancun area and did not know about the Wine and Food Festival in March. I need to blog about this and hopefully get more tourist to the area. Hopefully Hurricane Rina won’t cause too much damage.