NOLA Hot Sauce & Gourmet Show
While this is being posted on Saturday, my buddy Eric and I have been in New Orleans since Thursday evening. I am setting up this post prior to leaving, so I might have some pre-show stuff to share with you below. I have reservations for an afternoon cooking class at the New Orleans School of Cooking Friday morning. I will try to film as much as that as they will allow me. I am not sure what else we will try to squeeze in, but I will share with you as much as I can. If you can’t be there, then I will do my best to make you feel like you were.
There is a chili throwdown scheduled with CaJohn of CaJohn’s Fiery Foods and Cindy Reed Wilkins of Cin Chili that will sure to be smack friendly. CaJohn has been talking a lot of trash since they announced this. Lets see if he can back up his bravado. Cindy has been winning awards for her chili for some time now, so he will have his hands full. Bobby Flay couldn’t do it…
Besides the shows many vendors that I will be sampling products from, Intensity Academy is having another Lick-A-Thon, but this time the lollipop is even hotter, registering at around 1.5 million scoville units. Vic Clinco took home the 1st prize at the Weekend of Fire, and I was the runner up. With Vic rumored to be in attendance, will there be a rematch? His Facebook page does not mention about going, so I doubt it. Even if he does show, will we be able to stave off the mighty Cajun tongue from the competitors that step up to the plate? At any rate it should definitely suck. :_retarded:
There is also an awards dinner somewhere on Bourbon street Saturday night after the show. Tracey Carter from JACS Tailgaters, who is the man behind the event, has given me the honor of being one of the judges for the new spicy product competiton called the Fleur de lis Fire Pepper Awards. I will take this opportunity very seriously and hope that my taste buds are up to the task. I hear the trophies are something special to behold, and I can’t wait to share the pic with you as soon as I can.
If you can make it to the show, then you can check out the basic information below. In the meantime, Laissez les bons temps rouler, which translates to Let the Good Times Roll!
NOLA Hot Sauce and Gourmet Food Show
Pontchartrain Center, Kenner, LA
Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM
Tickets are only $5.00 per day.
It is Friday morning, and getting ready to head to the French Quarter for the cooking class. On the menu- shrimp and artichoke soup, crawfish etoufee, bread pudding and pralines. For those that do not know, the French Quarter is New Orleans big hangout area. It is the Mardi Gras party place. We will back there tonight for the awards. Finger food and drinks will be served, and their new awards will be handed out.
As for our travels, Eric and I spent 2 1/2 hours on the tarmac before we were able to take off. Not a good start, but we had some awesome Creole food and hung out with some chilehead friends like CaJohn, Cindy, Ole Ray, Tracey and some of their significant others. Everyone, especially Tracey understandably are very excited about the show. Only time will tell.
Now for the Friday night recap. As previously mentioned Eric and I took a cooking class in the French Quarter. Our chef/host/teacher Ann did an awesome job not only cooking for us, but entertained us with some New Orleans history. She was filled with such verve as she told her stories that captured our attention and made us laugh. I filmed it all, so I will share with you the videos some time in the next week or two. By the way the food was great, especially the shrimp and artichoke soup which reminded me of a bisque. The pina colada bread pudding was also a taste treat.
The afternoon was just walking around, shopping, drinking a little and sweating a lot. I got a buzz off of one Pat O’Brien’s Cyclone. I don’t drink too much, so a strong drink like that has a bigger hit on me. Later in the evening we got together for dinner at the Acme Oyster House. Now in attendance we had Michele and Tom of Intensity Academy, Carol and Tee from the Houston Hot Sauce Show, woohoo! It is was a gathering and a half as we passed around CaJohn’s new NOLA hot sauce he is debuting at the show. A tasty Louisiana style hot sauce. I also tried Jac Tailgaters’ Creole mustard on my andouille sausage, and that was real good too. The jambalaya I ordered was the best I have ever had, and the Chocolate Caramel Pie was da bomb. CaJohn wanted me to point out that I helped the table with the donation of my red beans and rice. Not my thing, so I was happy to give it up.
The show is a mere night away, so I will have more to report on that as things unfold throughout the day. Later.
With the first day done with, I have a lot to cover for you. While this show is not the biggest around I see a lot of potential for growth. There is a Gun Show next door and people are defintely curious and walking over to check things out. When there was the Wow Cafe & Wingery wing contest, the crowd gathered in anticipation and were excited watching it. I gave out bumperstickers and two of the contestants wore the bumperrstickers during the contest including the winner who then got interviewed by a local tv guy while wearing one on his hat and shirt. I gotta love the free plugs. The contest footage will be during the upcoming week or so.
A little later Intensity Academy had their Lick-a-thon, and I decided to make up for my runners up at the Weekend of Fire show in Ohio, and took home the prize this time. I did it while talking smack to the Who Dat nation in my Minnesota Vikings jersey. I felt like a WWE wrestling villian. I took a lot of heat for wearing the jersey all day long including on a crowded Bourbon street at night. What can I say, I love my team. Eric filmed the Lick-a-thon for me so you can see my award winning victory. No one sucked better than me.
A little after the Lick-a-thon CaJohn asked me to emcee the Execution Station. For those of you that never seen it, there is lineup of some of CaJohn’s hot sauce ranging from mild to extract extreme. The idea is to have people go from beginning to end without giving up. For their pain they got a CaJohn beer koosie(sp?) and 20% off of anything at their booth. Many people started but only a handful succeeded. One brave young man finished, but ran to the fudge guy next door for some milk chocolate fudge which I was recommending for relief of the pain. Well he consumed too much fudge too fast and like a Monty Python cartoon he sprayed right in front of the stage. I loved it, and I think Natedog who was doling out the CaJohn pain potions loved it too as witness to his Cheshire cat-like grin. I loved emceeing it and calling out the gun s
man I wish I was down there in the Big Easy with ya’ll! I know it’s a blast and hopefully I can make it next year – looking forward to the video’s and further updates on this one – btw Buddah I can’t believe you didn’t have a Hurricane when you were at Pat O’s!
Congrats on winning the contest. With all the practice you have at sucking it’s a given that you would perform very well at this. 😛
What all were they doing at the stage other than the contests? Did you MC the Execution Station at CaJohn’s booth?
Haha thanks. I am glad you weren’t here, I would have hated to end up second again. The stage was upfront as you walk in, away from the rest of the show. There was supposed to be some product demos, but not sure if anyone took advantage of that or not. Eric told he saw Michele of Intensity Academy out there yesterday. Other than that it was empty except for the contests.
I have been here at least 4 other times, so I have had many trips to Pat O’Briens for hurricanes. I prefer their Cyclones a lot more.
Today started off with a local tv crew doing a live feed to their morning show. Several companies got to do some camera, and I got volunteered into doing it too. I got to put the website out there, and try to push the gourmet side of the show. The ear piece fell out of my ear as I was talking and couldn’t really hear the questions the morning person was asking me. I just tried to push some of the products I picked out from the show, and the camera guy said it came out good. Hopefully I did okay. It was cool.
The highlight of today was the Chili Throwdown with Cindy of Cin Chili vs CaJohn. So much smacktalk, and you will be able to hear most of that when I post the video. The winner was CaJohn in a close battle. The crowd got to vote on the winner. CaJohn wore his New Orleans Saints Hawaiian shirt and yelled, “Who Dat!” in victory, the familar cry of the Super Bowl Champion Saints.
Mickles Pickles had some very delicious pickles including some with ghost pepper in them. In addition there was jalapenos in the same ghost chile pickle rind called “Near Death”. Plus the actual ghost pepper in the delicious pickle juice if you were brave enough to try it. Eric video taped me munching on one. It was quite hot of course.
The rest of the time I just hung out with people there. There was some awards given out including Best of Show which went out to Ole Ray for Porkalious bbq sauce. He gets a free booth at next years show. Yes, there will be a show next year in what I feel will be a huge event with all the stuff planned. The crowd was great today, and people saw some of us on tv. Michele said 90% of today’s sales were from people that saw her on tv. So the media blitz they planned did what it was supposed to do. I love New Orleans and I could do this show every year because of it. I was happy to help out when they needed me, and had fun doing it.
Many of us are planning to go out for dinner tonight, at a restaurant not yet named. Once everyone is packed up and ready to go. We are not leaving unt
[img]http://www.iloveitspicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/the-big-sucker.jpg[/img]
You should have picked up a real football jersey while you were in NOLA…..I mean a winners jersey. :_punk:
We our first injury to report, and the funny part is no alcohol was involved. We had a rather uneventful dinner and after dessert at Cafe Dumont we headed back to the hotel. At a quickie mart CaJohn wanted a NOLA sign that was in the ground out front. Well he decided to remove the plastic straps holding the metal spikes with his switchblade knife. Bad mistake. He sliced in between his fingers a nice sized gash. He might need stitches, but for now he is content to a trip to CVS for some bandaids. I have pics I might or might share with you. He thinks Cindy got a voodoo doll of him in revenge for the chili throwdown defeat. Here that is not too farfetched. 😈
Congrats on the sucker contest!!!
I knew I should have listened to John when he told me I should be buying HIS chili. So was that a showdown, throw down or smack down?
wts up dude congrads on the win but it is me the guy dat won the wild wing contest i just was checking on if u posted the video
Brandon,, I am still in Nawlins until late tonight. I will need a few days to edit video, go through some pics I have and post it. I will put up a little per day from the NOLA show and some other stuff I filled. I have your email, so I can let you know when that part goes up. Welcome to ILIS btw.
A little update about CaJohn from last night. After he got the bleeding gash to stop flowing, we sat in the hotel lounge area and just shot the breeze. As we stood up to say our goodbyes, CaJohn opened the wound up again. With a long car ride back to Ohio we felt a ride to the hospital emergency room was past due. So at 2:30 am, 3 hours after he cut himself CaJohn, Eric and I took off. He ended up with 4 stitches. We returned at 4am and said our goodbyes.
In reaction to last night, we slept later and didn’t get going in the morning. We did lunch at Emeril’s Restaurant and had an amazing lunch. It just got better and better as the meal That banana pie was awesomelicious.
At airport now and we are getting some serious rain downpour from the Hurricane way some of us. Hopefully we can fly out with no problems. Fingers are crossed. Look for pics and videos coming soon.
What a great time we had, and I look forward to next year’s show! I know this show will only get bigger and better! We enjoyed hanging out with Buddah on Burboun St., and getting to know all of the other vendors there. I also got a good chance to work on my pain tolerence also with all of the fine products that were at the show!
:_punk:
Hopefully you’re able to jet with no problems. Be safe.
So John tried to steal a street sign? I thought only rural teenagers pulled those kind of stunts.
I got back a little later than I wanted last night to start working on getting stuff together. Eric has most of my videos, and I have to wait until he can send it to me. So, I will put together something with what I have for today, maybe just pics, and get to the videos starting tomorrow. There is a lot of stuff, so if you are waiting for something specific, please be patient. Thanks!
Thanks. Home sweet home.
It was great to meet you and have a chance to hang with your krewe and you. It was a blast Saturday night.
Glad you had fun!! Sounds like a huge time of it!!
Next year man, you and da missus!
I wish we would’ve been able to be there too.
Very Possible!
It was great to meet you at the show. You did a great job on the channel 6 broadcast. I too had most of our customers mention they saw the newscast and came down. BIG kudos to Tracy for leading the effort to get the event together. Can’t wait until next year! See ya’ll in Houston in Sept. If you want me to send you some Blackberry Blas, send me your address via email and I’ll get it sent off. Thanks again for everything!
Buddah
Thank you so much for coming and helping make the NOLA Hot Sauce show a great success. We really had a great time visiting with everyone but most of all I Loved Spicing Up NOLA. I beleieve we really started the fire there in that city and the flames will be kindling for us next year. I am going to work on getting you a copy of the news interviews will let you know as soon as I can. thanks again.
Tracy, I have a video montage coming up within the next hour or two that I think you will like. All the other videos I have to wait for, Eric has them all. Any news coverage videos you get send them my way and I will be happy to post them. Thanks again.
It was great meeting you and your whole group. That blackberry was an interesting flavored product that I had not experienced before. Nice work. Thanks on the compliment, the ear plug fell out of my ear, and I didn’t hear the whole questions so I was just winging it for the most part. The camera guy said I did good, but he might be blowing smoke up my, ahem.
I hope to see you in Houston, but not sure I will have the funds to do it yet.
Great writing! Maybe you could do a follow up to this topic!!!
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