Eat Your Face Off! (Tracy's take on the Iron Fork)

Doing our best Andrew Zimmern impression, Derek and I attended City Pages' Iron Fork event at International Market Square on Thursday night and ate ourselves silly while sampling an impressive variety of signature dishes from restaurants around the Twin Cities -- all for a good cause, of course. With all proceeds going to Second Harvest Heartland, shelling out $30 per person wasn't too bad. And once we read the event description, we knew we'd be in for a treat.

The premise: An "Iron Chef"-type competition for chefs from around the Twin Cities. The bonus? 28 different vendors at stations surrounding the main floor, where the competition took place. I'm sorry to say I have no idea who won. I heard the event hosts bantering back and forth while the chefs took part in the competition, but I was too busy trying some incredible food to pay attention to who came out on top.

I did come away with a desire to visit some restaurants in the near future based on what I sampled. Here's a rundown of the highlights:

Restaurant: Afton House Inn
Food: Mini pumpkins filled with pumpkin custard and spice anglaise.
Review: Oh. My. Can we say decadant? Deliciously spicey, sweet and silky? My response to dessert has always been "no thanks, I'm not really a dessert person." And it's usually the truth. After trying these, though, I now have an exception, and the 2.5 pumpkins I consumed are proof of that. Forget pumpkin pie; this should be the new Thanksgiving dessert. These alone are worth paying a visit to the Afton House Inn.

Restaurant: Marla's Indian and Caribbean Cuisine
Food: Jamaican jerk chicken served with red beans and rice and vegetable curry
Review: God bless Marla for introducing me to Indian and Caribbean food with such a bang. The spiciness of the three dishes actually seemed to occur in phases, with an initial sense of spice followed by subsequent kicks moments later. Chicken, veggies and rice: a simple concept done right.

Restaurant: Shish Mediterranean Grill
Food: Spinach pie stuffed with organic spinach and special spices, falafels, grape leaves stuffed with some sort of spicy rice concotion, pita chips, hummus, roasted egg plant spread and some sort of garlic spread that's still haunting me two days later.
Review: Apologies about the somewhat nondescript food listing; I can't remember all that we had and my trusty food guide that they gave us at the event doesn't list all of Shish's offerings. But a bad memory does not equal a bad food experience. I should note that I've been to Shish before, and it's got the feel of a pretty simple college-y cafe (it's about a block from the Macalestar College campus, you order at the counter, etc.) -- nothing too fancy or exciting. The times I've gone there, I've played it safe and ordered a simple veggie wrap. This time around I took a no-holds-barred approach (actually, that was kind of my approach to the whole evening). When I made my way to the front of line I told the woman serving to fill up my plate with everything. And I'm glad she did. I'm a somewhat health conscious eater in that I don't like fried, greasy fatty foods. The times before that I've had the type of food Shish offers (from other places), I haven't been a fan. Falafels, for example, typically just taste like fried breading. But Shish had a definite quality thatg far surpasses any other Greek-type food I've eaten before. I think my return trip for seconds was proof of that.

Overall experience: Awesome premise for a good cause. I did feel like Derek and I were in the minority with our eating, though. For $30, we came hungry and determined to get our money's worth of food. I was kind of surprised, though, at how many people seemed to be just drinking and not doing much eating. Yes, the $30 covered beer and liquor, too, but with so many great dishes to try, beverages took a back seat. Plus, the beer was Amstel Light. 'Nuff said.