Bay Area Foodie

Mike and I spent Sunday afternoon with celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis. Actually we stood in line for 2.5 hours and talked to her for about 30 seconds.

So, I hear about a Q&A and book signing with Giada at Santana Row for her new cookbook Giada’s Kitchen. It sounded like fun so I purchased a book from Sur La Table and with it came a ticket to the event (I had #6). This was our first book signing so we had no idea what to expect. We arrived 45 minutes early to scope things out. Since it was a ticketed event I thought there would be no more than 50-100 people allowed to see her. I WAS SO, SO WRONG! When we walked up to Sur la Table there was already a line around the corner and into the 2nd section of the parking lot (at least 150 people). So what did we do? We got in line of course. Then I sent Mike on a recon mission to see why the heck the line was so long and what happened to the Q&A. He returned to tell me that the line was for the signing and that the Q&A was at the stage set up in the center of the row and that if I wanted to see it I would have to lose my place in line. The person in line before us had ticket number 395 which she had purchased the day before so there was potentially going to be 500 + people waiting with their bag-o-books. We decided not to leave the line and take turns going to hear Giada speak. She promptly arrived at noon and did a 10 minute Q&A which wasn’t super informative because I assume her die hard fans were standing in line. We heard about her new baby, taping of the upcoming shows … typical questions. Flash forward two hours and we had our signed book and a moment with Giada. If you know Mike he wasn’t gonna just say “Hi” and take his book he needed a little chit chit time (which he took 😆). She was nice and we were ushered to the side where you are allowed to take a photo.

The day didn’t go as expected but we can scratch this off our bucket list. I will think long and hard before going to another Sur La Table signing. I really think the function could have been run better. I was happy to hear that Giada was going to stay until the very last book was signed otherwise I’m sure you would have read about a pot & pan riot in the SJ Mercury news the next day.

Filed under: REVIEWS OF PRODUCTS | Tagged: book signing, ca, cookbook, Giada De Laurentiis, giada's kitchen, san jose, santana row, sur la table | 2 Comments »