Eleanor Hoh

(Excuse all the dark photos!) Nice way to kick into Easter weekend by attending a free Borscht7 Film Festival showcasing local filmmakers.  The lines were snaking round the Adrienne Arscht Center for over an hour when out of nowhere, a lovely couple offered us tickets to get ahead of the lines!  We were the lucky ones, yay.  We had no idea what to expect, some were pretty ‘off the wall’, no names mentioned. The best were the mouth synched short 1 minute pieces with filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and Werner Herzog.

We were starving after a 2 hour delay (I have low sugar problems), so we took off soon after intermission and headed for the After Party at Villa221. Disappointed we missed La Pageant Diva because my friend, Miryam was the Production Designer!  They keep the best for the last, wondering if they’ll post on their site so we can see it. Lesson learned? It’s important to be on schedule. 

To see whether you had any artistic ability after a few slugs of Fuze, there was a crazy spin art box!  You squirt paint inside a box that’s spinning a piece of paper at high speed.  The psychedellic art piece by moi (see photo above) was the result of a sugar rush (delicious combos but sugar content was 42 grams a bottle, whew!)

Glad we were among first at the After Party because there were no lines at the Alphabite food truck (part of the Miami Dade Culinary Institute, I recently attended their open day and hope to give my classes there). Surprised there was only one food truck to feed hundreds of people. Hope they had enough food cause the only other alternative was a doughy pizza offering!

I told Chef Alan my mother is Malaysian, so the pressure was on. I ordered Malay Beef with peanut sauce. It was ground beef with a crispy exterior, tender and juicy interior and the flavors were right on!  Beautifully presented on a banana leaf with a sprinkle of cilantro, I noticed my husband swept that aside, not his favorite especially when served raw. Well, they told me the truck is going to be serving during lunchtimes at their downtown campus and then they’ll join the food truck circuit.  I wanted more but not cheap, $8 a pop and not such big servings. I did go over and let Chef Alan know I liked it.  It’s good to pat chefs on the back because they spend a lot of time in a hot kitchen creating dishes to feed us and never know whether it’s a hit or not.

This shot was before the hundreds descended!  All the sponsors were flaunting their drinks and products. There was a DJ and then flipped into live music, the first was by Afrobeta who was in one of the films! He worked the graphics on the wall while the vocalist in her sultry voice invited the crowd to move closer to the stage!

As we left just as the crowds were heating up at 12:30am but very late for us, we noticed they had put up this robot looking sculpture at the entrance to the mansion. Very cute.  We did enjoy doing something different in Miami.