Note: The 2010 scavenger hunt is over (a concluding post will come soon) and we got first place out of 121 teams! This is a series explaining the background and thinking of our missions of the SF Street Food Scavenger Hunt 2010!

Mission: It’s time to host a dinner party, but not just with YOUR friends, but with another team playing the game. You will have to hunt down a secret ingredient and make a dish with it to be shared with the other team at a dinner party in a location of your choice.

Ok first. What team?

Another team playing the game? I scanned the list of the teams that were playing the game. Ok, what now? Do I try to play with the team that was at the top? Strategy. Strategy. Last year, I was able to find contact information for the teams since the photos were linked to personal sites. This year, it was all hosted on thegogame website. I decided to go for the most obvious one—Lick My Spoon. I knew that they made a writeup last year about the game…and I immediately sent off an email to Stephanie, the primary author of LMS.

Then I found Michael M whose team was Michael Eats SF. He was the first place winner of the 7×7 100 Big Eat SF Foodspotting Scavenger Hunt in February. I had been dying to ask him about his strategy of eating at 100 places in less than 2 weeks. Fortunately, I remembered his twitter name since it was all over foodspotting. Plus he used his full name as part of the twitter account. I looked at his website and confirmed that it was him…since his Japanese wife’s unique name was both present at the Go Game site and his personal site. Email sent.

Granted at this point, I had not even asked my team. I had low expectations, not certain whether anybody in the team had the desire to host the dinner party or know who to ask.

And most importantly, I hosted dinner parties in the past. I always thoroughly enjoyed cooking, serving and hosting people. And certainly didn’t think anybody else on my team would have that much energy.

A day later, I got a response from Stephanie and she CC’ed the rest of the LMS team. I was nearly jumping for joy at my desk at work. Secured! People! Guests!

In between client work, I quickly listed out several dishes that I had successfully made in the past, intended it to tempt the palate and to encourage attendance to dinner with strangers:
Corn casserole
“Boiled” water
Braised beef
Avocado tomato salad OR tomato peach salad with red onions
Gazpacho
roasted grapes and meatballs
Vermicelli with grilled chicken, cilantro, and kimchi?
Goat cheese with lemon juice, pepper, rosemary
freshly made soda water!

I quickly dashed out the email to the Lick My Spoon team and cc’ed my team. To my horror, someone replied who they loved the menu. Then another praised my incredible menu.

Then I paused…if everyone showed up from LMS and my team, there would be over 11 people. The biggest dinner party that I had served was only 4 people including myself. And it was because I had tons of leftover ingredients from a weekend party.

Would I have enough food? Better yet, did I have that much room in my apartment? I decided that Chris and I could sit out if worse came to worse.

I wondered if I was getting ahead of myself by hosting a dinner party on a short notice. I had less than 48 hours to get something ready. And there would be no way that I would stoop to store-prepared food—everything had to be made from scratch. At least most things.