Imagine being able to see all the newest and latest trends in cookware, sampling new food products, and seeing your favorite chefs up close and personal. That’s the International Home and Housewares Show held every year at McCormick Place in Chicago. This was the fourth year for my daughter Kristina and I to attend, and also this year, my husband Bill and daughter Kara were able to attend with us for their first time.
Here is a bird’s eye view of a very small corner of the show. It takes days to see everything. McCormick Place is massive, but every inch has something new and wonderful to see.
Here is the first place we head to every year – The Cooking Theater! Here is the sweet and generous Guy Fieri. He is a super nice person, and of course drew the largest crowd of the entire show. The audience went nuts over him.
Paula Deen is another crowd pleaser. She didn’t even cook! Her husband cooked while she chatted with the audience.
Iron Chef Michael Symon. He has a great sense of humor and really fun to listen to. He made a salad of fennel with some fresh orange zest that we could smell all the way at our seating area!
Curtis Stone had all the ladies swooning. If you think this Aussie chef is cute on television or in photos, you should see him in person. Beyond gorgeous…
Curtis at the signing for his latest cookbook. He even gave away chocolate truffles after signing books!
Is there anyone better than Top Chef Masters winner Rick Bayless? I could listen to him all day. He is the best teacher, and so relaxed and calm. He made three dishes – all amazing.
Rick is a huge twitter fan. If you haven’t read @rickbayless, go and read it – and try to keep up with him! You will learn things just from his tweets! Here we caught him twittering at the Social Media Center.
Another great teacher, Sara Moulton. She made crepes with a smoked salmon filling and had audience members come up and help her.
All of the chefs had their cookbooks available for purchase throughout the days of the show.
There were many more chefs at the cooking theater including Todd English, Cat Cora, Ming Tsai, and Masaharu Moritmoto to name only a few. If I put them all on here, this blog would go on for days! Suffice it to say, watching all the chefs was like watching the Food Network all day long. Pure heaven. We went home very happy and ready to try some new recipes.
Tomorrow I will be writing about some of products seen around the show!
The cute little Twitter chef!
OMG what an awesome show to be able to go to! so jealous
Lisa, go to- http://www.housewares.org – to read about next year’s show! It’s in March next year, too.
I felt like I was there! Fantastic bird’s eye view of this wonderful event! Thanks for sharing!