Marc and I recently attended Zest Fest 2012 in Irving, TX at the Irving Convention Center. Admission was $15.00 each and parking was $8.00 (for future reference, it's cash only for parking).
As you enter the convention center, there will be a booth to the right of the door of the event that will validate your printed tickets. You can also purchase tickets at the booth.
We met our friends Mano, Lisa, and Jason and they suggested a couple of booths we absolutely should visit first and then make our own path of how to explore this spicy goodness.
First, we visited a booth that happen to have various types of hot sauces (which is the same for all the booths) but what stood out was the fact that it was tasty and had the U.S. Marine labeling on it! So, you *know* Marc had to represent and buy the Marine-labeled sauce as well as the non-Marine labeled sauce (for consumption of course because the other is for show!).
The next booth was holding a contest for sauces made with the trinidad scorpion peppers. If you know much about peppers, it is measured at 900,000 on the Scoville heat unit scale. To give you an idea of how hot it is, the Trinidad Scorpion pepper is so strong that those who handle it must wear protective gloves. Exposure to the eyes or skin near the eyes when handling this pepper could cause temporary blindness.
They had a contest at the TS pepper booth that had, I believe, seven different types of hot sauce ranging from hot to HOTTEST. If you could eat a spoonful (about the size of the little pink Baskin Robbins spoons) of each sauce, you win a koozie and bragging rights. We couldn't do the challenge because that one spoon was enough to get Marc's head sweating like a faucet. I think it was rather tasty though and I agree with Lisa, they should measure peppers by recovery time...this one tasting took about 3-5 minutes to recover. What made it worse was the fact we were drinking beer and not the $2.00/carton of milk (kindegarten-size) they were selling.
Later, Marc and I went back to that booth and tried their chili. It was delish!!
We bought some really great stuff. Salsa, dip mixes (you mix the dry packets of spices/dried peppers with sour cream), two types of rubs, some awesome parmesan garlic wings sauce (made with REAL BUTTER-- that was their main focus when telling us about the sauce), and one booth gave us a sample of a "salsa concentrate".
Okay, the salsa concentrate is made to simplify your salsa-making skills. I believe it's a good idea for non-salsa connoissieurs. *All* you have to add is Rotel or tomatoes to the salsa concentrate....wait a minute...doesn't that defeat the purpose of making fresh salsa? Oh well, it isn't bad and it's not expensive either so more power to non-Foodies!!
We tried so many different types of hot sauces, BBQ sauces, dips, etc. We didn't really find a good BBQ sauce but then again, this was a "Spicy" Food Productions event.
I collected all the business cards (and wrote on the back what we liked) of the vendors we liked so that we can order items later or order more of what we bought.
I could go on and on about Zest Fest but perhaps, MARC can elaborate on his end. ;o)
