(WARNING: Lengthy post and LOTS of photos below!) 🙂
Last month, I had the privilege of attending the first, hopefully annual, Taste of Michigan food blogger event. When I saw Rachel tweet about spending a day visiting the best food places in Grand Rapids, MI with other food bloggers, I immediately contacted her to sign up! We already had plans to be in town visiting family, so it was perfect timing.
In order to keep an intimate setting, the event was limited to 20 food bloggers. Most of the bloggers were from Michigan, but four of us came from out of state (New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Mississippi)! We all gathered together to celebrate Michigan's amazing food scene!
Everyone first met for breakfast at the Fulton Street Farmer's Market. Unfortunately, I missed this part as I woke up to some pregnancy nausea along with a bit of laryngitis, and arrived just when the group was leaving the market. Judging from the other bloggers' comments and photos, breakfast at The Silver Spork food truck was pretty darn good, and the market shopping was fabulous.
Of course, we all whipped our cameras out to photograph the food before chowing down. On the top right photo, you can see Claire and Ashley doing just that. 🙂 Beth, from KitchenAid, also joined us for lunch and hosted a stand mixer and toaster giveaway. It was great to chat with Beth again after previously meeting her at the Food Blog Forum in Orlando. Hi Beth!
After our time at Reserve, we were given a couple hours of free time to tour downtown GR on our own. Since I was going to be doing that with the hubs the next day, I decided to use this time to head back to my parents' house to check on Judah and kick my feet up for a little rest before dinner.
Before dinner, we met back up for cocktail hour at Mixology before finding our seats for dinner with the chefs at Six.One.Six. A few of us missed Mixology because we found each other right outside the bar, and ended up gabbing while the time passed away, not realizing that cocktail hour was over and everyone was already seated for dinner! I wasn't complaining a bit, though, as these ladies were so much fun to chat with and alcohol isn't exactly in my diet plan right now while pregnant anyway. 😉
Pictured above, top left: Me and Nicole. Top right: Sheila and Chellie. Bottom, from right to left: Megan, Me, Becca.
I hope you can tell from this post that I had a fabulous time, and I hope that if you live in the Grand Rapids area, you will check out some of these places above. Or, maybe I've encouraged you to put Michigan on your "places to visit" list? 😉 Thanks to Liz and Rachel for planning such a wonderful day! And, thank you to all of the sponsors who contributed to the giveaways and swag bags, along with the coordinators for the stores and restaurants we visited. Fun time was had by all!
Sheila says
yeah! love it! you got so many awesome pics girlfrand! Hope to see you soon!
Megan @ whatmegansmaking says
Ha, can't believe you caught that picture of me with my iPad! Further proof that I need an iPhone haha. Great recap, makes me excited for next year!
Rachel Cooks says
Great recap! I'm so glad you had a good time and I'm so happy that we finally got to meet! 🙂 Hope to see you (and new baby) again soon!
Liz @ The Lemon Bowl says
What a fantastic recap!!! Your photos are stunning - I love this post because I got to relive all of the fun all over again!! Love the photo of the Middle Eastern bread too. 😉 xo