VEGETARIANS, AVERT THINE EYES.

No, beloved animal-hugging vegetarian friends. For serious. There are explicit pictures of animal carcasses below. Delicious, delicious carcasses. Maybe you should check back in on us on, like, Wednesday? When this post has moved down-thread a bit?

MEAT. OPIA. Meatopia. Meatmeatmeatmeatmeatmeatmeatmeatmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttttt. And us! As dessert!

We were asked to bring our CapoAwesome to this exceedingly cool event on Saturday in Brooklyn: Meatopia. When you get dozens of the Eastern Seaboard's best chefs together to have an enormous barbecue on a pier in Brooklyn, some wise soul is inevitably going to ask, "Hey. HEY. What about dessert?" That's where we came in. Thus, Sarah, Matty, Amanda, Caitlin, Lorenzo, and I stood up and said, "Yes. We will accept this challenge. We are Capogiro, and we shall bring many delicious sorbetti to momentarily cleanse your palate of all those delicious, delicious meat noms. AND PEANUT BUTTER GELATO BECAUSE IT CONQUERS." So we gathered early Saturday morning and hit the road...


Amanda, I think we're being followed. Listen, have you ever tried to caravan (dammit, I'll verb a word if I want) a car and a scrappy but under-powered and maybe over-extended reefer truck all the way up the Jersey Turnpike, over two NYC bridges, and through totally unfamiliar one-way Brooklyn streets? No, I'm guessing you haven't. It was...challenging. There may have been some cranky texts traded. But all would be well! Friends through a crucible and all that!


The view. It was y'know. Whatevs. So we were on Pier 5 in Brooklyn along Furman Street. It was my first visit back to New York City since I skipped off the East Coast in 2002. Nice welcome back. What this picture doesn't effectively capture was the hotness. You do remember it was somewhat warm last week? Yes. Warm. IT WAS A LITTLE WARM. Sarah and I tried to cool off in the back of our truck for a few minutes at one point, but we started getting a little goofy 'n wheezy and decided we'd rather sweat profusely than pass out. Smart call, I think. Dry ice: sneaky.


These two would have had the best view of everyone, but I don't think they were in a position to appreciate it. The cooks caring for these two lambs were the first there, as best as I could tell. And I could tell because they'd already sweat through their t-shirts by the time we got there. Hard workers, cooks.


There's just something about a whole pig cooking that always looks cheerful. I mean dude is positively grinning, don't you think? But he ain't got nothin on...


A WHOLE COW. GRILLIN.


WHOLE COW. ON A GRILL. It looked like someone had already begun working on the cheeks. I'm assuming it was a chef, not a cook. Chef's are greedy and have an ugly sense of entitlement. (kidding)



Winner. Obviously there was an amazing amount of genuinely, seriously good food. There was lamb sausage and foie gras croutons (!) and a smoked duck Thai taco thing on hand-made flatbread and, and, and...but this. This spoke to me. What you're looking at is grilled blood sausage with a poached quail egg yolk. Hands down, best thing I ate all day. Best thing I've had since Sarah and I went to Southwark, frankly.


Delaware, doin' it to ya in Brooklyn. Sarah and Matty, old, old friends. And Matt. Dude rocked it all day and all of the night. First we make him drive the truck up the Jersey turnpike. Then we drop a gelato cart on his head. Make him loiter in the heat for a few hours. Then he runs gelato back-ups all evening long, from the truck to the near cart, from the truck to the far cart, check in on Sarah in the VIP tent DOES EVERYONE HAVE WHAT THEY NEED? CAN I WASH A GELATO SCOOP FOR YOU?! Then we make him drive the truck back down the Jersey turnpike. AND DUDE IS A VEGETARIAN. There was molten, smoky animal fat wafting all over the pier for hours and hours and hours, and Matt just made it do what it was gonna do, y'know? Trooper. I owe you a beer or three.


Caitlin, scooping til she dropped. Caitlin: not a vegetarian. Definitely as excited about the food as I was. And Lorenzo just kept bringing it, and bringing it, and bringing it. Caitlin tried to keep up. Barbecue slider! A couple bites! Lamb sausages! Okay real quick-like! Oh man those foie gras croutons! Caitlin: I owe you a Gatorade or three. (Maybe a Cinnabon, but don't tell anyone.)

And Amanda was definitely also there and also worked her butt off! And Lorenzo was all over the place! And, ahem, I was hardly just walking around eating, as Sarah has suggested (though it seemed like Sarah spent a fair bit of time under the VIP tent, chillin' and schmoozin', ifyouseewhatI'msayingandIthinkyoudo). But I had to stop taking pictures because: busy. People figured out that A>it was quite hot, B> we are Capogiro and C>our peanut butter gelato conquers like Halladay and our lime cilantro sorbetto closes like Lidge. (One head-to-toe Yankees fan saw my Phillies hat and, unprompted, admitted that our team scared his team. Damn right, I said. I wasn't joking. He knew it.) People got in line three and four times. Mexican chocolate and pineapple mint and pear bourbon and blackberry and, and, and...it turned into a bit of a blur. Scoop and smile, smile and scoop. People were definitely glad to see us, and not just because it was hot. And we're at our best when we're busy.


Suddenly it was like this. I'd really, really wanted to get a picture of the sun setting next to Manhattan, but people need gelato. Then we were out of gelato. It was all over except to pack up. It wasn't quite that simple, but sometimes you keep things within the crew. Definitely a blast, all in all. Lots of smiles, lots of smoky charred fat, lots of gelato...I'm already lobbying for us to do it again next year. We'll see you then!