Janet Yurcik, right, poses with a friend at The Cute Little Cake Shop during the Fabulous Food Show. Yurcik opened the Strongsville bakery with her mother last year. It was early during the last day of Cleveland's
Sunday when Westlake resident Bob Warren stepped up to a booth and asked: "You sell dirt?"
A big guy with a black polo shirt smiled broadly: "We sell dirt."
Dirt isn't exactly the gourmet food one expects to find at this three-day culinary festival. Yet, by 11 a.m., event attendees -- who shelled out $30 for a full day of tasting and celebrity shows -- were stacked several deep at Todd's Dirt Seasonings Company.
"They are the greatest seasonings ever created by man," said Todd "The Dirt Man" Courtney. Then he added with his showman's shrug, "This man at least."
Courtney, who was the big guy in the polo shirt, gamely passed out small bites of well-flavored chicken as he explained that
after he realized that he wasn't happy with his life. Since then, the company is doing quite well, he said, with spices manufactured in Cleveland and sold at Whole Foods and Dave's Supermarkets.
Such success stories -- many with local connections -- were easy to stumble across while exploring the booths on Sunday. An estimated 30,000 people attend the food show each year to discover their own culinary treasures.
Tim Jones from Cambridge said this was his second year to attend with his wife Karen because, well, "I like to eat. We both like cooking."
They weren't the only ones.
When Aussie chief chef Jason Roberts and Cleveland's own celebrity chef Michael Symon took the stage Sunday morning, 2,200 attendees had already crowded into the stands. Symon was set to talk about pork.
Roberts, who works with Symon on ABC's The Chew, gave a sideline interview during Symon's show and was quick to say that Cleveland would be the first place he would want to open a restaurant because people here understand passion for food.
"We didn't cook to become celebrities," Roberts said. "We cook because we love food."
By noon, as the Roberts and Symon event wound down, attendees lined up for bits of orange sauce spread on bread -- a new packaged version of the pasta sauce that can be found at
in The Flats neighborhood of Cleveland. Tony Sainato said his sauces were now on sale at Giant Eagle and, he added with some excitement, that a national distributor he met at the show had really liked his sauces.
Being discovered didn't appear to be a concern at all for Janet Yurcik at
booth.
As she handed out tiny bits of moist and rich chocolate cake balls, Yurcik described how the Strongsville business grew so quickly after opening last year that she had to quit her job as a flight attendant.
The bakery, which opened in December 2011, has 200 different flavors of cake balls and pops, which sell for $2 a piece. Yurcik's mother Marcia Rehak started making the treats as a hobby -- one of her first was the "classic chocolate" which is chocolate cake mixed with chocolate icing and dipped in chocolate. Today, it's a best seller.
"It's crazy," Yurcik said.
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