Houndmouth at Eater Eve and the Eater Awards

Welcome to Road to the Eater Awards, in which the Indiana band Houndmouth chronicles the good eating along the Southern leg of their "From the Hills Below the City" tour, culminating at Eater Eve and the Eater Awards. This series is presented by Canon PowerShot, makers of the PowerShot S110 and SX280 cameras that captured all the action.

Grid View

• Andrea Reusing's carrot chaat. The favorite dish of the night.
• BBQ lamb sandwich from Peels.
• First cocktail of the night: jalapeño-infused Tanqueray, smoked salt, cucumber
• Revisiting Hattie B's hot chicken.
• Yes we did.
• Ashley Christensen's Oysters with creamed turnips, bacon-fat poached oysters, roasted tomato, and Carolina cheddar-cornbread crumbs.
• Rocking out, night two.
• Charcoal roasted sweet potato with country ham crumble from Maysville.
• Chef Kyle Knall.
• Packed house.
• Peanut macaroons with peanut-fed ham.

As always, New York City is both an incredibly exciting and frustrating place to be. On our very first trip to NYC, we opened for our friends Dry The River at Bowery Ballroom (which was so exciting) and then we hit a pothole in Brooklyn and our trailer literally popped off the hitch and skidded along the street shooting up sparks. I guess you could say that was frustrating…

Anyways, I think we finally figured out how to do NYC right—you have to know where you're going, where you're staying, where you're parking, and most of all where you're eating/drinking. During our back-to-back sold out shows at Mercury Lounge, we had to scavenger around for food and drink after the show. Which was fine, but the next two nights at the Eater events, we had everything we could want under one roof.

We showed up to the Angel Orensanz Foundation in the later afternoon on Sunday to load in our gear for Eater Eve. The building is a former synagogue and its absolutely gorgeous from top the bottom. The ambient lights and and the general antique-ness of the place have a pretty magical feel. We were excited to take the stage in such a cool place.

Everyone from Eater was super nice and took care of us in every way imaginable. Which wasn't hard to do consider the endless amount of food and drink that awaited everyone who came inside the joint. The downstairs and upstairs were littered with fantastic food booths from renowned southern restaurants around the country.

First, we check out some familiar faces: we visited with Chefs Edward Lee and Nick Sullivan torched our mouths again. We even said hello to Robert Newton and Kerry Diamond of Seersucker (and also of Nightingale 9) and tried their pork dish.

We adventured around to all the booths that we could handle both nights. Andrea Reusing's carrot (and many other ingredients) dish from Lantern was arguably the biggest pleaser of the entire weekend for us. All in all, every restaurant and chef brought their A-game to the Eater Awards. We couldn't have been more pleased.

The cocktails were the icing on top. From the gin and tonics with artisan bitters, to bourbon and you-name-its, and even to the jalapeno-infused gin cucumber cocktails - it was incredible. Oh, and plenty of Negra Modelo to boot.

We'd like to thank Lock and everyone from Eater for having us. We hit some great restaurants on our trip, and nothing compared to the gourmet experience of the deliciousness at the Eater Awards. It made us wish we could enjoy such things on a nightly basis, but now we are stuck back in food reality.

And an even bigger thanks to all the folks at the awards who checked us out. We'll be back around soon, keep an eye out. And maybe consider inviting us over for dinner, if you're into that sort of thing.