Today we headed over to the mission american kitchen for the fork the fire event, a charity event to benefit Heidi’s and Blackbird restaurants.  These two restaurants and a bunch of local shops tragically burnt to the ground a few months ago, and Heidi’s was one of our favorite little French places.

The following restaurants were in attendance, many of them we’ve been to and love:

Here are some not so great photos of the food at this event… I didn’t want to be a rude mofo and turn on the flash, so a lot of them turned out too blurry or dark.  I need to figure this restaurant-food-picture-taking-in-darkness skillset, any suggestions?

This was one of my favorites, because it looks like a cake but it’s not really a cake!  The brown part is a pumpernickel bread, the pink “frosting” is a salmon pate, and it’s topped with large mustard seeds which look like caviar.  Genius.

This is a salmon with beet puree and fried brussel sprouts and a bechamel sauce.  I surprisingly loved the beet puree, it had a yam-like texture.

Steak with mushrooms, puff pastry with fois gras and chanterelle mushroom pate, topped with dried apricot.  This was probably my least favorite dish in the bunch, the pate didn’t taste that great, almost flavorless and had the texture of cold butter.  MEH.

This is uh… the destruction I did before I remembered that I should take a picture of this.  It’s a delicious fish taco.  The waiter came by as I was photographing a plate of mostly eaten food, and I explained to him that I needed to catalog the destruction I did to this taco.

O. M. G.  I ate two or three of these.  Small toasted pita round topped with mozzarella cheese, wrapped in prosciutto, drizzed with balsamic and olive oil.  How do you not eat two or three of these geeeez.

This was my first picture and it was terrible I apologize.  But I included it because it was pretty tasty.  I had no idea what this was at first, but it’s red bell pepper on the outside, and white navy beans on the inside, oh and I think a mediocre scallop.  I probably won’t order this at a restaurant, it is lacking something, like bacon.

Dessert my favorite!  Chocolate moose, with a nutty flaky crust.  How do I not love you.  This was unique in that the mouse was very dense, almost an ice cream texture as Travis pointed out.

Red velvet cupcakes… dipped in chocolate ganache… with a cream cheese frosting drizzled with dark chocolate… I may or may not have eaten two of these, and commented to Sean that we need to go to Target like right now so I can pick up the rest of the ingredients for a red velvet cake STAT.

and last but not least, because this was the FIRST thing that I ate… a delicious macaron.  I was mad because when I went back for seconds, they were all gone, and I totally didn’t even touch the pistachios flavored ones.  *sob*.  I think I see a lot of macaron baking in my future.