3 Different Meetings, 3 Different States, 1 Day

I'm spent. Friday I worked from 8am until 11pm. I spent a good amount of time on Saturday working and visiting accounts, and yesterday afternoon I left for Connecticut. I had a sales meeting this morning in the Bronx so I drove most of the way to Norwalk, Connecticut and settled into my hotel room. I was meeting Nicola for dinner but there was still a good amount of time until we were going to meet up. So I got to explore the area with a nice jog! It was pretty rainy in Boston when I left so I had no motivation to exercise in the morning, but it was completely different in Norwalk. This town was sooo cute! The concierge told me a safe area to run so I made my way into the little neighborhood and even passed two old men, each in a golf cart, parked in a driveway facing opposite directins. It was kind of like the way police cars park when they're in parking lots just shooting the crap.

After that, I headed to South Norwalk and met Nicola at Barcelona...a Tapas and wine bar right in the middle of their downtown area. This place was great and of course, Nicola knew a couple people in there already! So we started with some charcuterie, crispy calamari, and rabbit sausage with a cheesy polenta. After that we had a bib salad...to clean our palates. Then we had the tuna tartare, pan seared bronzino, and mussels. We were actually a little too full to finish the mussels, but everything was pretty tasty. We decided we were going to go for a walk and skip dessert, but the bartender poured us one glass of dessert wine. I'm not usually a fan of dessert wines, but this one was really good! It was from Uruguay and had a vanilla flavor. I definitely picked up the vanilla flavor, but not quite like Nicola did...was it Tahitian or Bourbon vanilla??? I can't remember??? But I did tell Nicola we needed a picture together because I've mentioned him several times and no one here knows what he looks like. So here we are enjoying our dessert wine from Uruguay...



It was a great night and we did go for a little walk after we enjoyed our wine and met some other friends. One chef that used to work for Nicola showed up with the owner of Chocopologie...a great chocolate shop in South Norwalk also. Matt, the chef that worked for Nicola, actually used to work with a chef I work with now...and the Chocolatier was on the FoodNetwork before! So we all chatted for a while and then Nicola and I strolled.

Today was a very busy day...I had a meeting in New York at 10:00, which I wasn't late for although I thought I was going to be! That New York traffic! After that I headed back to Norwalk for lunch at Chocopologie. Fritz and his assistant told me to stop by on my way back to Boston because we sell some of his chocolates. So I got a tour of their super-cute cafe and they gave me lunch, espresso, let me try some chocolates, and sent me out the door with a frozen hot chocolate. The cool thing is that they mix spices in with their chocolate and I love that. So "Hannah", the first chocolate I had, has some Hawaiian salt in it. That's their most popular. Then I tried "Patricia"...a cone shaped chocolate filled with a white-chocolate ganache and chili. Very tasty!!! Very spicy, but sweet at the same time. And yes, the chocolates are all named after woman.

So I made it back to Boston in time for my first meeting with the American Institute of Wine and Food. It was a great meeting and I think it's safe to say I'm one of the youngest people on the board. But everyone was very friendly and I had a good time getting to know them and learn more about the organization.

So now, I need some sleep. I have some new olive oil baskets to bring around town. I skipped out of our building today because I feel like that's what I need to do with these for the full effect....we'll see what the chefs say!



Chow,

KK :-)