The Iron Yelper Elite Event at Cook Street

Wow! What a top notch event. If this is how Denver Unilocal rolls, I’m moving there. This event was well organized, smoothly ran, and the food was excellent. Congrats to all the cooks, you are all winners in my book.
Cook Street is a great concept and I am currently searching for something similar here in LA. A cooking school that is clean, friendly, and offers something for all levels of expertise.
Thanks to everyone who made it happen!

Creative. Over and over again, Tiffany amazes me and shocks me with her wonderful ideas. I thought Cook St. was awesome and I have always wanted to go inside to see what that place is all about. I will admit that the name was deceiving but I actually liked the way it turned out. I think it’s great to get Unilocaler’s working with other Unilocaler’s. There was a variety of tasty food, great drinks, and I had a great time!
Thank you, pretty lady!

It was a really tasty and fun night! The drinks were flowing, the apps were tasty, and the crowd was lively.
I wish it had been a bit more educational and that people hadn’t treated it as such a casual event. C’mon, we’re downtown, in a large city, on a Friday night — put something nice on!
Thanks Unilocal and Cook Street!

Uh oh, revision time…
What a schmuck! I didn’t even congratulate Hans and Lacey for their delicious dish. You guys did have the best flavor I think. Karen and Scott, nice work too. You’re presentation was so professional and def the best. I think we all were lucky to take part and confidentially, I was on the coolest team ;) yay Team Shrimp. See ya’ … rematch?

Big ups to Tiffany and the Cook St. staff for such a great and interesting event! While I’ve been unemployed, these elite events are always a real treat. Free booze, food, mingling with awesome peeps, well sign me up!
Ok, so I was thinking that this «iron chef» event would mean all teams would have the same ingredient to cook with, but that was not the case. Each team had a different main ingredient. But, that’s enough complaining from me since again, it was a free event and it was still a blast nonetheless.

Another big up to Lacey M and Hans O for the paella dish and chicken satay app. In fact, I’m still thinking about it days later.
Good to see everyone out! Thanks again Tiff!

I had heard of Cook St before, but couldn’t quite get a picture of it in my mind. I’m really glad that the elite event was here because now I know where I need to go. The staff was really friendly and the chefs seemed to be really knowledgeable.
Pitting Unilocalers against each other was a fun idea, although I think it’s really hard to put different people with different tastes on a team and have them make a cohesive dish. All the dishes were yummy and it was a great idea for Tiffany to make it a semi-​blind vote.

There are a few sweet things to life. Having Unilocal chefs cook for you is definitely one of them. I’d say this is going down in modern day history as one of my favorite Elite events! Plus, I would have never found Cook Street on my own and I’m so glad I did. Did you know they host a date night every month where you get to eat dinner that you made together?
I didn’t vote, though.
Mostly because I didn’t know only three teams had competed and I was too busy telling Brooke and Matt F. how cute they look together.

This was my first Elite event and am happy I signed up now that I know what I have been missing: o)
I have driven/​walked/​stumbled by Cook Street plenty of times but never noticed it before. I guess cooking school is not a top priority on my list of things to do though after looking at their website the culinary date night sounds like a good idea!
So not knowing what to expect, I get there at 7 on the dot and after meeting Tiff at the door and getting signed in by her fella, I am directed to the free beer and wine along with some scrumptious appetizers. I noticed the Unilocalers chosen to cook were already cooking so my hopes of it being like the TV show were dashed. Trying out the samples maybe could of been organized a little better and I didn’t get to try the shrimp as it was all gone by the time I got up there: o (I also couldn’t hear what the cooks were saying when describing what they made with the ingredients they were given. No biggie tho, you cant complain with free food, alcohol, goodies and fun: o)

This was such a fun event! Especially being one of the «iron chefs». I know that many Unilocalers were disappointed that it was not set up more like the Iron Chef t.v. show However, from my perspective, I appreciated that.
First of all, the format helped calm my nerves because of the head start we had. Secondly, having different ingredients for each team helped with variety of food for the guests. And lastly, we were told to shoot for a 7:30 serve time in order for us to actually enjoy the event and have some drinks… instead of us slaving away behind the stove for the entire event.
Overall, I had a blast cooking with Hans and the other volunteer chefs. The Cook Street chefs were super helpful and accommodating. Thanks Tiff, for a truly successful event… and thanks fellow Unilocalers for voting for the paella/​chicken skewers!
**(I think the name of the event was a little misleading… maybe could have been called a Cook-​off, or Challenge instead).

First off, I have to admit that I live in the building next door to Cook Street and have only ever been there once (for coffee, which I never did get)
The space is gorgeous and I was practically drooling over the shelves upon shelves of cookbooks they have there (most of which are up for sale). My boyfriend has promised to head downstairs the next time we need new knives and the appetizers they provided were stellar.
I also, was a little bummed that there wasn’t more «game» to the contest. I would have liked to see some on the floor reporting of what was going on and hear some quips from the chefs as they prepared our meals, but after seeing the kitchen setup, I realized it would have been really difficult to do that.
The portions were fine for my tastes, just a bite of this and a bite of that. It WAS a little disheartening to see a few people walking away with massive plates (that were not to share) as I had to ask twice for *a* shrimp for my boyfriend. That’s just the way these things go sometimes, though. You can never fully anticipate how many people are showing up, and as the school was providing the ingredients, we make the best of what we have! (And the shrimp dish was totally the best — btw)
We will definitely be keeping an eye open for the 10^th anniversary events at Cook St, the scavenger hunt sounds like a blast!

Cook Street Iron Unilocaler was a 5 star event especially for those of us who volunteered to start at 4:30 and put our amateur skills out there for you our Unilocal audience to judge and write about.
As Doug Y says, The Cook Street staff gave us a great tour of the kitchen. We saw where and how the students prepared dishes for their classes and at the same time where all the equipment and food was that we could use. If asked, we were given instructions on some pretty cool equipment such as steaming ovens and high powered food processors.
In case you do not know, Tiffany comes to these parties at the same time and begins turning the venue into a Unilocal event by stuffing Unilocal gift bags, talking with management, decorating tables, making sure the whole evening will be special for you. In the case of this event, she also helped us draw teams and our «special» ingredients tray. Doug, Rebekah, and I drew the shrimp.
The staff at Cook Street told us this was their first event to be held so loosy-​goosey; our head chef made up the rules an hour before we started. They offer corporate team building events and our event was modeled after it but with more cocktail time for Unilocalers. We were told to use the ingredients on our tray but we could possibly flirt for other ingredients, and to prepare a dish for judging. We were also told that since this food belongs to the school, we should be respectful of what we used. And of course some ingredients were hands off.
So on our tray were 3 dozen shrimp, 8 lychee nuts, a piece of ginger, a small bag of Indian basmati rice, Urdu smoked pepper, and yellow curry. Doug Y flirted with the chef for cauliflower, I flirted for a handful of strawberries, blueberries, good chicken stock, Rebekah flirted for a red pepper and a squeeze bottle and away we went.
This is where the 5 stars come in, I watched our team and the other teams and was so impressed with the way we worked together. We all just started preparing our dishes with the goal of having everything done at 7:30. It is amazing to me how people who have never worked together can come together with a goal and get it done. Obviously we had Mr. Doug’s wonderful Asian cooking experience and my chef flirting skills but what you do not know and I was so thrilled about, Rebekah did all of our decorations and that red pepper Unilocal flower was awesome.
As you can tell, we the chefs got the 5 star experience and the love and praise of our fellow Unilocalers. And for those of you who feel slighted by my offering the last of our shrimp to a friend, let me explain. My friend of 30 years has a new lady in his life and this was my first time to meet her, I just wanted to make her feel welcome. If we had known we were going to feed more than 70 people, we might have cut those 36 shrimp in half. So hopefully, I will not be permanently Chopped.

If you’ve ever gone to a great party you’ve probably noticed that a lot people gravitate toward and spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Just like bank robbers gravitate toward banks for the money, the kitchen is where all the food and beer is. So why not just go ahead and have an entire party in a gigantic kitchen? And to top that why not take advantage of all the extra dishes and make it a cooking competition, too. Done.
That’s pretty much what happened last night at Cook Street, with a wonderful antipasta bar, a very nice selection of complimentary drinks, and an Iron Chef themed cook-​off. It was a great opportunity for me to realize that I should cook more. And I might go back to Cook Street for a Scotch and Steak class just to get started.

Overall, this event was another outstanding Unilocal-​well-​done. The setting, the snacks (tapas/​antipasta/​appetizers/​whatever finger-​foodish-​word you prefer) were great, free wine and beer is always great (I especially liked the white), and the staff was friendly and helpful.
My own vegetarian-​ness aside, reports from The Dude’s palate said all dishes pointed to «go» in terms of tastiness. His favorite was the beef dish, which I thought seemed the most challenging as far as ingredients went; his comment was it was a really original idea. It was fun for me just because I enjoy cooking and it was interesting to hear the sorts of ingredients the teams had to work with.
I took off a star because I thought we would get to see some real action – some sauteeing or chopping, maybe something being set on fire? Unfortunately, the most action I saw was Beef Team (team 3?)… or… Team Beef? Team Beef sounds better… I watched them plate up their little slaw and steak slice, but that was it. While I know it didn’t have the capacity to have all three teams flying back and forth at once (ala Iron Chef), I figured someone could have at least bitten the hell out of a yellow bell pepper like that guy does on the Japanese program before the teams explained their dishes…
Either way, this event was still a lot of fun (and food!) in a spectacular setting. Every Elite event I’ve attended I am always amazed at the job that’s done with setting the event up and getting so much awesome perks out of it. I have yet to walk away from such an event feeling anything less that… well, Elite.
Congrats, by the way, to Team Chicken ;)

This Elite event is by far the best I’ve ever had, it was a blast! We (competitors) had to get there by 4:30 and try to memorize were all utensils, pans, are, how to operate their ovens, grills, and check their pantry; this learning process took us about 45 minutes but it flew by since it was so interesting. We had assistance from Cook’s School chefs whom were super nice and very knowledgeable.
Thank you Tiff, you rock!

I am so in for the next one. This was a great idea, Tiffany. As usual, you hit it out of the park.
What a great place, first of all. Fantastic exposure for Cook Street.
I loved seeing my fellow Unilocalers cooking away, and the rest of us reaping the benefits of their labors. It was almost cruel, though, just getting a taste of each of the dishes… it just made me want more. One little itty bitty bite of chicken saté (accent on the e. Thanks K.A. smart ass) was not enough… not enough for ANY of the dishes.
Free food, wine, beer, etc. how can you complain? Then, combine that with all the fine Unilocaler people… in this wonderful venue?
Portion control is a difficult thing with an event like this, but I hope next time it works out better so everyone gets a taste of everything.
Overall, though, excellent event, but it’s Tiffany, of course it was excellent.

For my first Elite event in Denver I have to say, it rocked! I got to meet lots of really cool people and the food was great! It was very well organized from beginning to end. Great job Tiffany!
Since Dallas Unilocal is a lot smaller I’m used to smaller groups and being able to get to know everyone. But I recognized some people and I’m not shy so I introduced myself. I look forward to future events and meeting more Denver Unilocalers!
I do wish there was more interaction with the cooks and the ‘audience’ but I understand they were on a time crunch.
Cook Street was really cool. The BF and I have been talking about taking cooking classes for fancier meals, and I liked that they had all of their information available for everyone to take with them!

Thanks Tiffany and the fantastic chefs and staff at Cook Street for a one-​of-​a-​kind night! There were seven of us who showed up for a friendly cook-​off. I was really excited to be able to use the amazing kitchen at Cook Street and learn a few tips from the Chef running the evening’s event. There was an element of surprise for everyone — those of us cooking didn’t really know what to expect when we arrived and I am glad that all the Unilocalers who attended were good sports about it all. My cooking partner, Scott, was a blast to work with. Who knew that figs, gorgonzola and good beef hook up nicely?
Like so many others, I’m looking forward to taking advantage of the many cool classes that Cook Street offers. Can’t wait to go back.

I’ll start with the good. Cook St. rocks. Thankfully the beer/​wine and appetizers were sufficient to fill me up until I got home (see below). The staff was awesome, very attentive, and very friendly. I’d love to come back and take some of their classes, we grabbed the schedule.
Now, the bad.
I normally love the Unilocal Elite stuff my wife takes me to… until last night.
I’ll admit I formed a few notions before entering, on what I expected from the night based on the name.
I expected each chef/​team to cook and talk and there to be banter.
I expected each course to be plated and handed out.
The reality was, we had to get up and get in line. The cooks already had the dishes mostly ready before the event event started.
The first dish was serve yourself, which worked pretty well because everyone’s inner «don’t be a dick» kept them from heaping their plates up. It was also quite tasty.
The second dish, I can’t really comment on, since Mary Jo gave her friends huge dishes of food, more than one shrimp, etc so when my wife and i got to her (after watching her scoop up a plate of food, walking it past us to a friend farther back in line) we got a few chunks of cauliflower, and 2 bits of strawberry. FAIL
The third course did it well also, plating the dish, they didn’t have enough for everyone, which is a bummer, but at least there was no «get a heaping plate of food at the rest of our expense» It was pretty tasty as well.
Overall I think the idea is a cool one and can definitely be a fun night, but the execution and (possibly) lack of ground rules set it up for failure

How cool is Cook Street???
Man, I think that place rocks.
I’ve been watching Iron Chef and I thought the idea of putting Unilocalers in the Iron Chef spotlight was genius. All I needed to make the fantasy complete was Alton Brown chatting my ear off.
So, the evening started off for me with a delightful Red Wine and some delicious artisan cheese plates with some delicious accompanyments. Then I got to sample the magical dishes the Unilocalers prepared and I’ll say that they did a great job! I loved the hanger steak and the shrimp and cauliflower, both were delightful dishes.
Once again, Tiffany finds a cool event for us to enjoy! I’m very excited to book my Steak and Scotch class at Cook Street.
Thank you my ladyhawke for rocking my world yet again.

The event was inventive and well organized. It was great to see new faces, even though I didn’t get the opportunity to talk to everyone. The setup, and the competition were more for visual presentation than actual socializing, but still a great chance to put faces to reviews.
Free beer, wine and food is always a bonus. Free is free.
The teams were comprised of 6 or 7 of our favorite Unilocalers, Hans and Lacey, (cutie patooties), MJ, Rebecca, Scott T, Doug Y. The food was interesting and normally not things I would generally order in a restaurant, so I was excited to see the range of talent amongst our Unilocal chefs. Great job!
We also got a chance to hear about the school itself and help them celebrate their 10 year anniversary.
Tiffany has a knack for organizing events which are unique, and showcase the community. Thanks for sharing this with the Unilocal community! Another coooooool event!
Bravo and THANK YOU!