Toast to The Triangle
While I was teaching children with Autism, this foundation offered to donate $50,000 to our school if we managed to raised $10,000. Well we met that challenge and it was amazing to see our hard work pay off (literally!) and to reap the benefits of that contribution for the school.
This foundation held its 25th annual fundraiser, “Toast to the Triangle”, this weekend. A friend of a friend I had met this past year donates/ purchases tickets every year and I couldn’t have been more exited to accept the invite to go!
There are tons of silent auction items and raffles for prizes such as a trip to Las Vegas, Disney World, Spas… etc. The main goal though (aside from raising money) is to sample the best dishes, drinks, and pastries from the best restaurants and vendors in the area, who are in competition to win!
So we started out the evening with a local wine sample…
( This was a dry red but you could taste the Muscadine grapes used). They had several local breweries with beer samples but I just had to save room for all of the delicious food to come so I skipped the beer!
We started the sampling with a Tzatziki and Gyros ( minus the pita for me) from XIOΣ Authentic Greek, which is a family-owned Greek restaurant that imports wine from the island of XIOS (where their family is from).
They may import the vino but they make all of their menu items from scratch everyday using traditional recipes from the island of XIOS. We all loved their Tzatziki sauce.
Next was The Mint, which I have heard awesome things about so I was eager to sample their Truffled Mac N Cheese.
It was interesting, I loved the extra flavor of the truffle oil and fresh herbs. That flavor definitely made it more of an impressive dish. It reminded me of “out of the box” mac n cheese though! I was excited there was tons more to try!
Much better pasta was right across the way at Poppyseed Market’s table!
They did a Butternut Squash Lasagna, which was fantastic! It had layers of pasta with butternut squash, spinach, leeks and a creamy four cheese sauce with Goat Cheese.
They also had a sample of their Not Yo Mamma’s Pimento Cheese on Toast, which was good but I’m “Not Yo” average fan of pimento cheese.
I was a huge fan of this Black Bean cake though from Lucky 32.
They serve these with Corn Relish and Sour Cream. The corn relish was a nice balance of spicy red onion, tomato, and sweet corn that does really compliment the Black Bean Cake nicely, which would definitely be a substantial vegetarian entree. I like that they note on their menu that it is vegetarian, and also they have revised the recipe so that it is low in sodium and fat!
Now, I remember taking photos the next dish from Azitra because it was my favorite of the whole evening. However, it did not show up in my gallery. I will have to see what happened. It was AMAZING chicken curry and the meat was so tender, flavor was perfect. It’s a shame I can’t seem to find the photo.
Fosters is an American Grill that was featuring their Baby Back Ribs, which are slow roasted and served with BBQ sauce.
Great smokey and sweet contrast, although the meat could have been more tender.
My friend Jimmy and I split the samples from Giorgio, Braised Pork with Curried Cannelini Bean Stew.
We could not figure out what was in this!! I think my taste buds were easily and quickly overwhelmed by this point! I tasted the curry, but couldn’t place the other flavors that I think was just chive. It was sweeter rather than spicier, but not my kinda dish. This vendor was my first temptation of dessert, a Dulce De Leche Bread Pudding topped with Dates.
Good thing it was small- There are many desserts to come! As we moved on, we didn’t want to miss Ruth’s Chris!
Green Beans and Roasted Garlic (with butter too!) and a slice of what I am pretty sure was filet, but really, its from Ruth’s Chris- you can’t go wrong with a cut of beef from there in my opinion!
Isn’t it interesting the portion distortion, look at how big the fork is! It really was maybe 1 ounce of meat…
More portion distortion, this is not a normal size wine bottle ( 750 mL)…
It was huge, fake and bigger than a 2L Bottle ( Can you tell?)
Last of the entrees was the house favorite of Daniel’s Restaurant & Catering,which is Penne Alla Casa!
This is penne with a red sauce, cream, parmesan, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and spinach.The balance of cream was perfect, it gave you this hint of garlic, salty cheese but then tart tomatoes. Hmmm
Onto Desserts!
Daniel’s also had a decadent brownie, with chocolate chunks and fudgey ganache, covered in hardened white and dark chocolate.
We went around the corner for Rey’s Banana’s Foster. He made some fresh by lighting rum on fire in the skillet ( that is Rey with a big ol bag of brown sugar!)
reducing the alcohol, adding in lots of buttta and lots of brown sugaaaahh…
and it turns out like the pot on the bottom right: banana pillows floating in their brown sugar rum sauce, just dying to be poured on top of ice cream. Thank goodness Luke shared this with me- I had more to sample and could have devoured that whole pot. ( okay probably not)
and then there was CAKE!
Happy 25th Toast to The Triangle
Samples included:
French Vanilla Cake with Fresh Strawberry Compote and homemade whipped cream from Sugarland Bakery
Vanilla Cake mini’s with Strawberry Buttercream
Cinnamon Swirl Cake with White Chocolate Filling
I think my weakness is cake, the frostings and fillings are what get me. I am so particular, but I’m so glad there were three other people to share with me!
I wanted to have at least a taste of each one, and I did. I had about half of the bigger slice, which was the Cinnamon Swirl Cake with White Chocolate Filling, which I want to say is from Christin’s Cakes.
Oh my…. Are you stuffed yet? I was! Hope you enjoyed all of my taste’s of the Triangle from “Toast to the Triangle”!
The entree winner for the event, I believe, was from Giorgio’s, the Roasted Pork with Curried Beans that I shared with a friend. I have to disagree though, my favorites were Ruth Chris, Daniel’s, and Azitrias.
