taste of the nfl

warning: i have so many opinions on this event that i don't even think one blog post can do it justice. but i will do my best and i promise you the following:

1. i will try to keep it as concise as possible, seriously
2. i will break this post down into sections (food and event and deep thoughts, respectively) so you can read what you want. it's like choose your own adventure only less cool.
3. umm yeah... that's it.

the food

the food was hit or miss. the way this works is that each restaurant or caterer has their own table where they serve one or two small bite type items. there were somewhere between 35-40 food tables (the program lists 36 but there is at least one, sake bomb, that was not listed in there). some of the best food was from the private caterers, i think because they know how to do this kind of thing.


here's a breakdown of everything i ate and what i thought of it:

vito's cafe - meatball sliders: ok, but very salty. needed more sauce.

hofbrauhaus - rahm spaetzle: tasty. i've never had spaetzle before but i would definitely eat this again.

the iron horse restaurant - braised short ribs with grilled summer vegetables: dry as hell and bland. bleah.

smokey bones - mini porkies with cole slaw: ok but kind of dry and not the best bbq in cincinnati. mustard bbq sauce is good but not great. cole slaw tastes like it came from a tub.

la petite pierre - indonesian beef tenderloin salad: beef was good but the rest of it was kind of blah. this tastes like vietnamese bun salad (which i love) only not as flavorful. i would not go back for this.

tano's catering to you - chili rubbed shrimp roasted and topped with guacamole and roasted tomato and cilantro oil: damn good. yum.

the phoenix - crab cakes with lemon basil aioli: ok. unmemorable.

teller's of hyde park - buffalo chicken eggrolls: weird. not something i ever need to eat again.

sake bomb - sushi rolls (i think i had spicy tuna, salmon and avocado, and shrimp tempura): absolutely delicious. way better than the sushi i had in their restaurant. one of my favorite things i ate all night.

jeff ruby's waterfront - beef tenderloin and caramelized onion crostini with aged balsamic and shaved pecorino: tasted fine until i realized that the texture reminded me of eating tongue. then i could not eat anymore. it's probably good objectively but it made me personally want to gag. kieran also liked it until i said it seemed like eating tongue. then he spit it out and threw it away. "i thought you liked tongue," i said. "stop. i'm going to throw up," he said. so... yeah.

the palace - cuban sandwich with plantain chips: best thing i ate all night. i raved at the chef who apologized. "we don't actually serve this at the restaurant." i begged and pleaded and told him it was the best cuban in cincinnati and promised that people would flock from all corners of the city for it. "sorry, it's not on the menu," he shrugged.

knotty pine on the bayou - sauteed shrimp: close second to the cuban, and this one is actually on the menu. big, spicy as hell, juicy fat perfectly cooked shrimp. yum. i want more right now.

chez nora - pecan breaded chicken with brandy mustard sauce and wild rice: yawn. nothing special.

chez nora - melon wrapped with prosciutto: damn good. excellent prosciutto and perfectly ripe melon. kieran: "i hate ham and i hate melon. i am not eating that."

bella luna - bread pudding with amaretto butter sauce: good but nothing memorable.

cincinnati cooks! catering - mini kobe beef burgers on a pretzel bun topped with maytag blue cheese and caramelized onion: dry and surprisingly bland given the combination of ingredients. also the pretzel bun just did not work for me.

jag's steak and seafood - jumbo shrimp cocktail with spicy cocktail sauce: you can't really mess this one up but they did it right. perfectly cooked shrimp and really tasty sauce.

the oceanaire seafood room - sesame seared ahi tuna with napa mango slaw and wasabi soy drizzle: this was a huge slice of fish but it was all disappointingly bland. no spice, no flavor, just tuna. it needed a better sauce and it could have been good. the slaw also tasted like nothing.

andy's mediterranean grille - chicken kabob and rice: as usual, drier than the sahara. i had to drink an entire beer just to finish chewing and swallow this. well not really but almost.

and that, readers, is the food. at least, that's the food that i ate. there was more. i did what i could.

the event

this was a way more crowded thing than i expected. i grilled my kind inviter (i do not know if this person wants to remain anonymous, but you never know and i guess it's better safe than sorry) who told me that there were 800 guests in attendance. it took place at some event space in paul brown stadium, and it was jam packed.


when you walked in they gave you a martini glass with the freestore foodbank logo on it. most people just ditched these somewhere rather than keeping them since they were awkward and breakable. there were also a few signs here or there, and one small table off to the side of the silent auction where people could pledge to pay a certain amount of money to feed a child or a family for a fixed number of weeks. other than that, this event was all bengals.

although i did not see many of them, i learned after the event that all the bengals did in fact attend, including coaches. then again, who knows who i saw. i have no idea what most of them look like and was only going by stereotypes (big, tall, muscley).


all the food and drinks were donated either by the restaurants or the companies that make them. the food and drink tables were lined up along the sides of the back of the space, and in the front was the silent auction, a small stage, and a bar. there was a live auction at one point that lasted for about a half hour or so, and there was music. and of course lots of food and drinks.

that was the event. there you have it.

deep thoughts

if you have made it through that, now you get to find out what i really thought. can you tell i have been really restraining myself? once again i have found myself really confused as to how to write this post. on one hand, this is a hugely popular event that raises a lot of money for the freestore foodbank ($100,000 total... $75,000 from ticket sales and $25,000 from the auctions). this is an opportunity for a popular local sports team to mingle with its fans and also raise money for a great cause. it is a huge hit among bengals fans who go back year after year to this event.


yet... it made me very uncomfortable. in fact, upon reflection, i was so weirded out by the whole thing that i don't even think i actually had a good time. yes, it was nice to try all the different kinds of food, but the event was really crowded and it was mostly standing around and honestly i just don't care about the bengals. all of that would not have been that bad though until we got to the end of the night and the restaurants started cleaning up. and that is when i really started to feel disgusted.


table after table began dumping their leftover food into trash cans. i started looking in the trash cans. they were filled with food. some of it was leftovers and a lot of the rest of it was sandwiches that people had taken one bite out of, pieces of meat or fish that people just had not felt like eating, and bread and crackers that came on the side of a dish. trash can after trash can after trash can filled with food. all of this at an event to benefit the freestore foodbank.


of course i did the only thing i could think of to do... i began taking pictures. all night i had not been motivated to take out my camera but when i started looking in those trash cans, i needed to document it. the juxtaposition just floored me. here we are at an event whose whole goal is to raise money to feed hungry families, and we are throwing away an absolutely frightening quantity of perfectly edible, and in fact pretty damn good food. my mind was spinning. what the hell was even going on here? the restaurants started noticing what i was doing and began covering up their trash cans so i couldn't take pictures (!!!).


i explained my picture taking to kieran who was equally disturbed. his number one concern though was the fact that it was almost impossible to tell that this event was actually even meant to benefit the freestore foodbank. there were a few signs with the logo in the corner, and of course the martini glasses, but otherwise this just seemed like fun times with the bengals. there were no photographs posted of the freestore foodbank or its beneficiaries, no presentation or video or anything like that about what the organization does, no mention of it on the signs marking each of the restaurants.

at the silent auction, there was only a small table off to the side with a couple sign up sheets (each with only one bid per sheet at the end of the night) for people to give money directly for food, rather than in exchange for an oil painting or a bengals jersey or a signed baseball or a hotel weekend (all of which got a number of bids). it was very easy to forget, if in fact you even knew it in the first place, that the purpose of the event was to raise money for the freestore foodbank. it seemed like the message was just "eat food with the bengals."


having each worked and volunteered at multiple nonprofits in a number of different cities, we have both been to many fundraisers. and never before had either of us ever seen a fundraiser that gave so little mention to the organization it was meant to raise funds for. i know the bengals were the big draw here, and that really is a good thing because it got so many people to come to the event. but it was like the freestore foodbank was more of just an afterthought, and one that people could ignore altogether in their quest to taste (and throw away) every restaurant's offering.

mulling these things over at the end of the night, i started to feel more and more depressed. "you know, we're not any better than anyone else here," i said. "i threw away a ton of food tonight." "actually we're worse... we didn't even pay for our tickets," kieran observed. "everyone else at least gave money to the freestore foodbank. we just threw food away."


"i'm really depressed now," i said. "we should have taken our passes and given them to some homeless people to come in here and eat." "that would never work," said kieran. "they would just come in here, go straight for the open bar, and get completely liquored."

at that point i began wondering if this event was really worth it. 36 restaurants which probably spent, i'm guessing, between $500-1000 each for food, staffing, plates/utensils, decorations. that's say $30,000 right there. and then there was probably a good $10,000 at least of alcohol and drinks. publicity and marketing, maybe another $5,000? and i'll add in another $5,000 for things i have no idea they spent money on but probably did. so let's say $50,000 went into the event. i could not imagine that they had possibly made that much money and it all seemed like a waste.


but i have now learned that the event actually makes $100,000 for the freestore foodbank. that is a damn lot of money. and even if a lot of food is thrown away, it is nowhere near worth that much. so is it worth it? i have no idea. but i do feel better about it now that i know how much the event makes.

taste of the nfl really does raise a shitload of money for the freestore foodbank, and in the end that is what matters. but still, i really wish they did not have to throw away so much food in the process. it just really bothered me, given that the whole point of the event is to feed hungry people. and nobody else there seemed bothered at all... probably because it was so easy to forget that helping the freestore foodbank was the whole purpose of the event.


"good thing i don't really care about the environment," kieran said as we left, "because then i would really be depressed. do you know how many plastic forks they went through tonight?"