Thursday, April 4, 2013

Edmonton's Philly Cheesesteak?

So I spend quite a bit of time in Vancouver.  And I'm always struck by how often I feel the need to apologize for choosing the City of Champions as my home.  Convos usually go something like this:

Me: Hi nice to meet you!

Vancouverites: Oh hey.  Ya we were just having a convo about the many ways to prepare nutritional yeast.

Me: What's nutritional yeast?

Vancouverites:  Oh right.  You're from Ed-Mon-Ton.  Yawn.

It's Ehmintin bitches! And I'm sick of feeling this pity.  It's a great town but tis true at times I wish I had more handy examples of why I have chosen this place as my home.  So I have come up with an #ideas4yeg.

I want to have a cooking contest that brings all of #yeg 's top chefs (and one lucky NAIT culinary arts student) together to create a signature dish for E-town.  Think Philly Cheesesteak or Montreal smoked meat!



The contest (which could be set up as a charity event) allows top chefs to prepare an entree and have local celebrity judges vote for the winners.  The top 3 would then be available for sale at say Taste of Edmonton or Heritage days (or maybe all the summer festivals), and #yeg citizens can vote for the one they want to see named E-town's signature dish.  The dish can be officially crowned by the Mayor and the winning chef gets accolades galore.  Hopefully it prompts other local restaurants to try to create their own versions.  If it works, then maybe 10 years from now my convos in Vancouver could be more like:

Me: Hey I'm from Edmonton.

Vancouverites:  Awesome.  You know I'm really craving me some Etown [insert name here].

Me: Just had some yesterday sucka!

If you like this idea, please consider voting for me at #ideas4yeg

So what's the big idea???!!?

So if you know me, none of this will come as a surprise.  I have a lot of big ideas.  Like A LOT.  And like BIG.  There is no pattern or area of expertise.  And they're not very well thought out.  And they often come to me while under the influence.  But they're HUGE!

I used to dream of one day having a job where my title was something awesome like Chief Visionary Officer.  Somebody rich and probably eccentric would pay me big dollas to come up with big ideas.  And I'd come through for them.

Now I have started to become more realistic.  Such a job doesn't exist.  And if it does, entry-level salary is likely well beneath my salary expectations.  So alas, I have decided to blog about them.  I invite commentary more in terms of suggestions on where to turn with these ideas.  Or like some procedural feedback.  Less, "hey good for you you're S-M-R-T" and more like: "that's already been done".  Who knows, maybe we'll strike gold together!