So last night’s Philly Cooks Big Event was a blast. 40-odd restaurants, all handing out their best snacks to the crowd. Many, many bars pouring many, many cocktails and beers for the thirsty hordes. Bakers and cake-makers and a whole hallway full of purveyors and suppliers offering samples of their products. It was one helluva night, and almost all of the restaurants brought out their big name chefs to make sure that everything went smoothly (let me be the first to apologize to anyone eating out in Philly last night and expecting those recognizable names to be working behind the stoves).

When these things are done, I generally run down a list of the bests and the worsts of the evening, but last night was one of those rare times when nothing was disappointing and every chef in the place was out to one-up the chef next to him. So from Fette Sau‘s ribs to Matyson‘s uni mousse, from the foie gras liverwurst at Brauhaus Schmitz to Marigold‘s brilliant butternut squash soup with cinnamon foam to the little bahn mi buns from Le Viet, everything was delicious. And with multiple cocktails from London Grill, Lemon Hill,  Emmanuelle and Ranstead Room to wash it all down (not to mention the shots of cold-pressed Vietnamese coffee from Rival Bros. chased with Matt Ridgway’s PorcSalted popcorn), by the end of the night I wasn’t really in any condition to remember anything going wrong anyhow.

Thankfully, we had COOK’s photo ninja and Friend of Foobooz, Yoni Nimrod, there to document it all for us. So if, for some reason, you weren’t able to make it to the party last night, here’s just a little bit of what you missed.

Yoni Nimrod Photography [Official]