As is our tradition in October, we just completed (yesterday) our 7th Taste of Bethesda.. the annual event in Bethesda, Maryland that samples the regions amazing selection of restaurants, eateries and local flavor. The numbers I've used is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 people attend every year. Downtown Bethesda is corded off and vendor tents are erected early in the morning, and local restaurants that have signed up create mobile kitchens to serve "tastes" of their food. Yes, not a foreign concept, but I explain in case you've never seen this sort of thing...It is a very family oriented scene, lots of kids, parents, Big100 Radio Station is there (who by the way, only seemed to have 3 cds to play??), and a good time is generally had by all. We have been pretty much the biggest attraction there since we started. The first year, my sous chef and me, along with my loyal wife and a few people from the restaurant hosted the event, doing our crabcakes and Seafood Corn chowder. I can't remember how many "covers" we did, but I only remember my Sous Chef spinning around in a circle about a million times, scooping crabcakes onto a tiny griddle and spinning the other way to plate them up ontop of a baby burger bun to serve. We also did cups of steamy Seafood chowder as another item. This was a challenge, as we heated up the soup onsite with a big propane burner. We did this setup for a few years, until chowder became the item we had to guess on.. .I'll explain... due to the timing of this event, you never know what the weather will be like, it's been 70 degrees and sunny, down to 55 degrees, cloudy and rainy. Then you had a few years that started cold and ended kind of hot, so you never know. One year, we caught the igloo cooler on fire..but that's for a future post... This year started out a bit of a mess. My Operations Chef did a great job of setting up this year, as the years have gone by, I've trusted my assistants more and more in taking care of the details. It's that thing us Chefs aren't that good at (DELEGATING!) but I've managed to let go of the reigns a bit. Anyhoo, he had us setup well, and we were ready to go with 600 lbs of crab cake mix..yes, you read right, 600 lbs, packed in 50 lb containers. We use 3 double griddles now, with three of us cooking and over 12 people in the booth. We serve 4000 crab cake sandwiches now, have eliminated the soup, but added a hand shaken lemonade stand on the end. Last year with the hot weather, we sold 700 lemonades, but that's another angle. On to the mess... WEATHER! The day was rainy, about 50 degrees or so,and we got super worried that we wouldn't have the attendance of usual, and be stuck sitting on quite a few crab cakes. We loaded up the 24 foot truck and headed over. We carry EVERYTHING we need, because although the event is within a few blocks, it's really kind of tough to make trips back and forth, so checklists are imperative. We've been smart and updated lists over the years, so we don't carry anything unnecessary and make sure to bring the important stuff. As we got setup, the rain continued to come down, forcing us to pull our tables in and deal with the potential reality that our day might just suck. The bar is normally setup completely outside the tent, so that would have been a huge issue. Luckily for all of us, as we had the griddles setup and hot, testing them, the rain started to lessen. As the event actually started at 11, things were pretty cleared up , and we breathed a collective sigh of relief. People usually get flowing around Noon, and this year was no exception, the lines grew, and crabcakes were sizzing at a non stop pace for about 3 hours. Aside from a few grease burns on my arm and avery long day for all of us, the day was a success. We ended up selling about 3000 sandwiches this year, and about 100 lbs of mix left over. Only 350 lemonades or so, as the weather was pretty cool. I want to say thanks to all the staff who participated... Chef Bruce, Josh, Filomena, Eva, Jessica, Armondo, Amy, Jason (FOH), Pam (GM),Tyler, Hooman(golf glove and all) and my wife who will most likely be helping me count over 10, 000 tickets this year. She has tirelessly helped us year after year, for no pay I might add, but this year with the weather issues, and the great number of people that we had, I gave her the day off. I'll include some pictures in a day or two, when I get my camera back from the office. Does this kind of cooking interest anyone, any questions? I find that the details that I don't even think about, people want to know..so if anything here sparks a question, shoot me an email to cheftony@cheflifeoneline.com and I'll post answers. Thanks for reading, Chef Tony