ottawa foodies

The dinner for 1000 happened this past weekend, did anyone go?

www.ottawasun.com

The same story but a few more pictures on Citizen
ottawacitizen.com

Anne DesBrisay
ottawamagazine.com

I tried to go. I started trying to get tickets a couple of minutes before the hour and tried until about 10 minutes after the hour. The message I got said something about the site not being available. I switched computers and the next message I got about 5 seconds later was all sold out. Call me cynical but my guess is that a lot of tickets had been spoken for by organizers and "friends of". I'll be curious to see if anyone here was able to get tickets.

A friend of mine went and sounds like she and her husband had a great time.

Incidentally, her husband works on the hill, and she is part of the Canada 150 committee. I'll ask her how she got her tickets.

I don't think you need to ask how she got her tickets :-)

Big corruption, if true. Everybody involved should be ashamed of themselves if this 150 event was just for the 'elites'.

I asked and she said the event sold out in 4 minutes. She got her tickets through Ticketmaster, took the first pair offered and didn't try to change them. She thinks the Executive Director would have gotten a pair though.

I trust her, and I don't think this event was for the elites. As well, sounds like she met lots of new people there, not people she or her husband worked with.

How much were the tickets?
Were they priced so that us non elites might have been able to afford?

Steve Beckta was interviewed about the sell out and he said even the restaurants participating didn't have extra tickets to hand out.

Anyone else hate the Ottawa magazine site. The banner/header takes up a quarter of the screen.

Define "extra"? How many tickets did each resto get?

I just opened the Citizen and am delighted to see that the likes of Jim Watson, Catherine McKenna, Grete Hale and Gay Cook were able to score tickets within the 4 minutes of being sold out. I wonder how many other known people managed to get tickets within that four minutes? And paid for them out of their very own pockets? I have unsubscribed to Canada 150.

Zym - you could ask Steve directly.

It was a great event & it was a huge benefit to the Parkdale Food Bank, The Ottawa Boys & Girls club (to renovate their kitchen), Shepard's of good hope, Ottawa Mission...

Does it matter who went or who didn't, imagine if the Mayor wasn't at the table???

Quit looking for the cloud in the silver lining, it was a great event, it was an enormous amount of work & everyone involved deserves a huge pat on the back!

100% agree with Terry (whoa!). Sometimes those in privileged positions get privileges; that's not gonna change. Was great to see a lot of the visiting chefs and crews spending time in the kitchen at the Mission, PFC, visiting Ottawa restaurants etc.

My problem is that this was sold as a prominent 150 event in a ridiculous place - shutting down Wellington in front of the Peace Tower. The privileged should have their fancy din-dins wherever they want, but 'the privileged get privileges' on the 150 trademark - which belongs to all of us - should lead to Marie Antoinette.

Meh. Save your outrage for something worthwhile. It's a high profile event with limited seating. VIPs getting seats to ensure their attendance is hardly cause for storming La Bastille. Canada 150 had plenty of events, and free events, for the masses.

I agree with Terry, OSoloMeal, & Others. As for the price of the event, I get very tired of people complaining about the cost of tickets when it is a fundraiser. It was put on by reputable people in the community and lots of money was likely raised. In a City of hundreds of thousands of people, 1000 tickets don't go far.
Lets pick our battles!

Just to be clear, I am delighted the event raised a lot of money for charity. I support charities a lot more than a lot of people, so that is not my issue. I also did not have a problem with the price of the tickets. See my first sentence. What I was objecting to was that the web site wasn't functioning at the time the tickets were on sale and yet the event sold out in 4 minutes. That's what annoys me. And yes, I know there are other events going on that I can attend. That assumes I am interested in attending those events, free or otherwise.