Asheville Event Photography: Chow Chow AVL Fire It Up!
I have put off blogging about this super fun event from Chow Chow AVL, Asheville’s premier food and beverage festival, since forever because I knew it would be dang near impossible to pick my favorite photos from the night! (Admittedly, if my biggest problem as an event photographer is narrowing down how many photos I love, life is probably alright.) How often do you get to witness chefs cooking on molten hot glass, let alone photograph it!
The evening was seriously a photographer’s dream: happy people, colorful food, an interesting setting, and action shots and sexy smoke swirls galore. It was glorious.
So, some of you are probably asking “What is Chow Chow AVL?” since this past September was the inaugural year of the festival. Chow Chow is a multi-day immersive experience in Asheville, North Carolina that explores the unique community of creative makers around the city’s table. The festival highlights local growers and farmers, brewers and chefs, and crafts people and artists through a series of interactive events. Hurry up and get your tickets for Chow Chow 2020, which runs September 10-13.
Fire It Up! was one of my favorite of these events. Local area chefs and makers joined forces at Lexington Glassworks in downtown Asheville to cook up tasty bites inspired by the colors of the pieces in the gallery by using the heat of the molten glass in the glassmakers’ studio as their kitchen. It was unbelievably cool. Chef Annie Pettry of Decca roasted up onions both on pools of molten glass and inside of lava-hot vase-in-progress to oohs and aahs of the crowd, but perhaps the most exhilarating moment was when glass artist John Miguel Almaguer blew Mother Earth Spirits through a bowl-in-progress to create a giant, gorgeous fireball.
The food was delicious, the experience was incredible, the drinks were fabulous, and the people were so warm and welcoming. Scroll on down to relive one of my favorite evenings from Chow Chow!
