Atlanta Cheese Festival

 

This past Friday, Matt and I attended the second annual Atlanta Cheese Festival, a surprise date that I gifted to him for his 28th birthday. Neighborhood chili festivals are great, but I have been dying to attend a specialized food festival with a little more flare. When I stumbled upon the Atlanta Cheese Festival's Facebook page a few weeks back, I was instantly intrigued. Cheese? We love cheese! We feasted on a cheese and meat plate the night we got engaged (famished after putting off dinner for a few hours while we called family and friends), and we went to France, a cheese-lovers Mecca, for our honeymoon. 

Parisian window shopping, G&G style

This year's ACF was held at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, which I am ashamed to admit I had never visited despite having just celebrated my three-year Atlantaversary. The festival only lasted from 6-10 pm (and one hour of that time was reserved for our VIP craft beer and cheese pairing), so I wanted to get there right at 6 to get our money's worth. When we arrived we were greeted with a cheese backdrop perfect for snapping that perfect, Instagrammable couple's pic (or in our case two solo shots because we are awkward and never ask people to take our picture). 

We quickly scanned our tickets, slapped on our wristbands, and headed inside. I was ecstatic when I realized that the ACF's set up would allow us to tour all of the gardens throughout the night. The timing of the event was perfect too, as the gardens were decked out for Fall with mums, pumpkins, scarecrows, the works. 

                                       

                                        

                                       

                       

#Twinning

                                     

                                      

We only had a few minutes to look around before the craft beer and cheese pairing began at 6:30, so we bee-lined it for the nearest table of cheese vendors and woofed down samples like it was our last meal. We quickly realized that pacing ourselves would be key, and that having a drink to sip on in between samples was crucial to cleansing the palette. 

After our ten-minute cheese binging session, we headed off to one of the ABG's side houses where the beer and cheese pairing was being held. Each participant had the following placemat at his/her seat: 

                                    

Each of the 5 cheese samples was paired with a beer from Rogue Ales, and one of the lead moderators was Rogue's head brewmaster, John Maier. The head of each farm also served on the panel in order to speak to the individual cheese selections.

                  

As this was a tasting and the beers were large, we were grouped into threes with one person designated as the pourer. Based on where we sat down, Matt and I were unfortunately split into different beer pouring groups, and as luck would have it I was paired with the two most obnoxious tasting group members. Group member #1: Hipster male in his mid-thirties and a self-professed homebrewer who, when not constantly offering his own side commentary, was texting his wife pictures from the event. I came to find out that the wife of group member #1 was at the wine and cheese pairing taking place next door, and that she did not like cheese. Um, excuse me? That makes absolutely no sense Mr. Hipster, and I hope you are the DD tonight because your wife is subsisting on wine alone at the CHEESE festival that you bought tickets to attend. Group member #2: Extremely annoying woman who was chosen as the group pourer and shouted out questions/commentary to the panel without being called upon throughout the entire presentation. She also called me "young lady" throughout the night like I was a misbehaving six-year-old. Ugh. #1 and #2, naturally, did not mind each other's rudeness and chatted and clinked glasses the entire night, while I kept close to Matt and tried not to make eye contact.

My favorite cheese of the night.

Overall, Matt and I thoroughly enjoyed the beer and cheese pairing and learned some interesting facts about the brewery and creameries that were featured, but we would not pay to do it again in the future and here's why: 1) The moderators were extremely long-winded and each member of the panel commented on each pairing, which was definitely an overkill; 2) It turned out that a lot of audience members were homebrewers and they were constantly asking brewing questions. I am all for asking questions, but some of the audience members needed to dial it back a bit and let the panel finish their stories (I'm looking at you, group member #2); and 3) Most of the audience committed my absolute biggest pet peeve, which is talking while other people are talking/presenting. This action makes my skin crawl and literally causes me to tense up and get angry. I think it is so incredibly rude to hold a side conversation while someone is taking the time to speak, not to mention the fact that we paid extra to attend this event and that money partially goes down the drain if I cannot hear a word of what the panel is saying. The head moderator tried to rein in the unruly ADULTS, but it was of no use. 

The pairing ended about 15 minutes late, so we chugged our remaining beers, grabbed our swag bags, and booked it out of there as soon as the last comment from the panel was spoken. 

The event was set up throughout the gardens in a farmer's market style, with over 100 vendors selling everything from cheese (duh) to crackers to spreads. The vendors came from all over the US, and each one was very hospitable and eager to tell us about their products. Unlike other food festivals where you are allotted a set number of tasting tickets, festival goers at the ACF are allowed to try as many vendor samples as they can possibly stomach before going into a lactose coma. We wandered around to all of the vendor areas and ended up purchasing three different goat cheeses, pimento cheese, rosemary crackers, and a dipping sauce. We would have bought more but we ran out of cash and not every vendor had the ability to run cards. 

The VIP package provided us with 4 drink tickets each (the general admission tickets provides 2 tickets), which after consuming beer samples at the tasting and a lot of cheese samples, was more than enough. People were definitely getting testy with the long lines for alcohol, but after getting the lay of the land we realized that the line was only long at the drink booth right in the center of the festival, and that there were a ton of other drink stations hidden away with much shorter lines. 

The ACF's main attraction is The Meltdown, a grilled cheese cook off between some of the best restaurants in Atlanta. This year's competitors included Miller Union, Cooks and Soldiers, Restaurant Eugene, Muss and Turners, and Highland Bakery, just to name a few. At the peak of the festival, the lines to get samples from these amazing restaurants were incredibly long, leaving many people disgruntled. Muss and Turners was even out of samples and had closed up shop by 8 pm, but that was the only restaurant that we saw that had a supply issue. We waited for the lines to die down a bit and eventually were able to try all of the samples that we wanted, so I won't let that experience deter me from coming next year. A lot of the grilled cheese entries contained pimento cheese, which is not my favorite seeing as I loathe mayonnaise (I am my mother's daughter), so that crossed a lot of potential tastings off of my list. Everyone is allowed to vote once for their favorite entry, and at the end of the night I cast my vote for Restaurant Eugene's grilled cheese (cheddar, sliced apples, caramelized onions), while Matt dropped his vote into Highland Bakery's jar (pimento cheese with fried chicken). Neither of these restaurants won, however, and the trophy was awarded to Homegrown for the second year in a row.  

The victorious grilled cheese from Homegrown

With our bellies uncomfortably full of delicious cheese, we sauntered out of the gardens as the bluegrass band played its final tune to close out the night. We had a great time at this unique event and enjoyed stepping outside of our date night comfort zone. We look forward to going back next year and will hopefully persuade some friends/fellow cheese lovers to go with us!