City Weekend Awards

Yesterday was a lot of fun. I ate dinner at the brewery, and then headed off to the City Weekend Restaurant and Bar Awards Ceremony at G+Plus (a club downtown) with Michelle (roommate) and her boyfriend, Rafael, a good friend of mine who owns a Mexican Restaurant around here - Adobo Latin Flavor. His place is the go-to spot where my friends and I all hang out to grab cheap drinks and good food. They were going to the awards ceremony as well, so I rode with them. Here's Michelle and I at the front entrance:

The whole thing was pretty cool. You gave your invitation to get in, and there were programs for the awards with lists of who got what for which category. Some of the biggest categories were Restaurant of the Year, Best Global Cuisine, Chef of the Year, Bartender of the Year, Bar of the Year, Band of the Year, Club of the Year, etc. They had a band playing during the whole thing, free food and cocktails, and they went through the categories much like you would see at an Academy Awards Ceremony, and they gave awards out to First Runner-Up (2nd place) as well as the Official BEST (1st place). Kelley wasn't feeling well all day, and so she only came for about ten minutes, so I went up to accept the awards for all of her restaurants :-) I felt kind of like a celebrity. I was definitely the 'mvp' of the night, as I went up on stage to get a total of 5 different awards! Unfortunately Boxing Cat didn't take 1st place in anything, but we did get First Runner-Up for both BEST AMERICAN RESTAURANT and BEST BEER SELECTION (and also 2nd runner up for bar of the year, but you don't get an award for that). Cantina Agave, Kelley's Mexican restaurant, took 1st place for BEST MEXICAN/TEX-MEX RESTAURANT (I felt bad, because Adobo took 5th in that category). Closed Door, Kelley's Italian place, took BEST BRUNCH and First Runner-Up for BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT. I guess I'm working with the best in Shanghai!! Rafa's restaurant got BEST HAPPY HOUR, so that was really cool to see Adobo win.

I met some very cool people at this thing, and it was pretty awesome because people would walk by me and say congratulations, shake my hand, hang out and chat about things for a while. I left the party with business cards for a guy who is opening up a new hotel chain in Shanghai and hopefully a brewery in the near future, a design engineer who does interior design on a lot of new restaurants/clubs/bars/hotels/etc, an owner of a new club, and some others. Connections are key in a big city like this! It's too bad I didn't get any cards made up for myself before I left for China, I often find myself receiving cards (I have a nice stack of about 20 in my apartment) and people asking if I have a card to give them, only to inform them that I unfortunately do not. I've been playing it off as if I just ran out, so that seems to work pretty well =)

Overall, a very cool experience. I'm glad I had the chance to go.

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PMM