iron fork

The folks at the Nashville Scene were nice enough to send us a few tickets to this year’s Iron Fork competition down at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Being food lovers, it was impossible for us to resist the chance to try some of the best grub from around the city. We jumped at the chance and headed down there last Wednesday to see what the event was all about.

The champion's trophy

There were several hundred Nashvillians in attendance and a few dozen local eateries and food shops handing out samples of their recipes and products. If you think you can’t fill your belly with samples, you should be sure to attend Iron Fork next year and give your theory some field-testing. We never expected to be so happily heavy with food from such tiny little portions, but when the flavors on offer are so tasty it’s hard not to get seconds and thirds.

It seemed like nearly everybody had some sort of pork dish at their station – not unexpected in Nashville, and certainly not unwelcome since we’re known fans of the pig. The best was from Whole Foods, who offered up a simple dish of tender, slow-roasted pork shoulder with greens. But also more-than-satisfying was the southern egg roll from Two Twenty-Two Grill & Catering, the new in-house restaurant at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and a dish from Amerigo made up of pulled pork and pesto over a parmesan polenta.

Fantastic as most of the pork was, our palates were glad there was more on offer than just savory dishes centered around “the other white meat.” We sampled a fantastic bacon-wrapped chicken breast with pepper jack cheese from Mere Bulles, sno-cones from Fleur De Lis Flavors, and a tiramisu with candied pecans from Finezza that drove from our memories all the mediocre tiramisu we’d eaten in our lives. And The Cupcake Collection‘s sweet potato and red velvet cupcakes were a treat like no other on offer Wednesday night, with a not-too-sweet, creamy, grainless frosting that had us coming back for more.

Purple sweet potato madness!

And then there were the Stokes purple sweet potatoes that ended up serving as the secret ingredient for the competition portion of this year’s Iron Fork. Whole Foods showed off the versatility of this tuber, grown on old tobacco farming land in North Carolina, by turning it into four different products including a creamy sweet potato butter and a delicious cocktail sauce. And the five master chefs did incredible things with the Stokes purple, too – or so we’ve heard.

While the food-and-drink aspect of the event was very well organized, the competition portion was hard to follow. An old friend of ours works at Tayst so we knew who defending champion Jeremy Barlow was by sight, but otherwise we couldn’t identify the chefs from our vantage point. That made it difficult to develop any sort of rooting interest and turned us into disinterested onlookers rather than involved audience members. And while there were cameramen on the floor, just like Iron Chef or other televised cooking competitions, what they showed us on the high-def flat screens rarely matched up with the banter from Carrington Fox and the other Scene-sters on the mic up in the front of the room. Luckily, Jim Ridley has an Iron Fork recap post with the details so you can learn about the victory by Acorn‘s Chef Andy Hunter.

Team Tayst at work

We would’ve preferred to follow the competition with excitement, but the circumstances forced us to pay it little mind and focus on the food instead. But there were so many tastes, and so many friendly people offering them up, that the competition disappeared into the background and we were left to enjoy an evening of some of the best food Music City has to offer. Regardless of what you expect in the beginning, an end result like that is never a bad thing.