Other than meeting our precious new addition to the family, the highlight of the trip was being allowed into a media only event for Food Network.  We scheduled our trip knowing that the New York Food and Wine Festival was taking place. For those of you who know Emily, you know that her main passion in life up until the past year has been cooking. Because of this, our family have been regular viewers of Food Network. . .especially Next Iron Chef, Next Food Network Star and anything with Robert Irvine.  I was so excited to tell Emily that she was going to possibly see some Food Network Stars, only to find out that you have to be over 21 in order to get into any of the events. I was totally disappointed. A very long story short, I ended up connecting with the head of social media for Food Network, Kate Gold. She totally went out of her way to do everything she could to make one of Emily’s bucket list goals come to fruition. (Emily had written on her bucket list last year that she wanted to meet Robert Irvine.) Over the course of a month, Kate sent me many e-mails with suggestions for places to eat and must not miss places such as Chelsea Market and Eataly. But, about a week before we came, she said she figured out a way that Emily might be able to see the chefs from a distance.

We arrived on Friday morning with very few expectations. We soon realized it was a media only event promoting The Next Iron Chef {Super Chefs} with some of Emily’s all time favorite chefs. You should have seen our reaction when we got there and saw we were standing about 20 feet from Alton Brown and Robert Irvine. :)  I was beyond bummed that I had only brought my tiny point and shoot camera. . .I have never been so upset at myself for not having my good camera with me as it was truly a once in a lifetime event.  (Insert Emily’s comment here: I told her over and over the night before to bring her camera but she just didn’t listen. Her Norwegian stubbornness came out for sure!) Emily was able to meet all the chefs and have her picture taken with them. Out of all of them, Emily really enjoyed meeting Alex Guarnaschelli, who took quite a bit of time and talked to her, encouraged her and gave some great advice.