The Tortilla Press tweetup was fantastic

Ever heard of a cow pool before? How about twerpsearch? Did you know that you can make blueberry perogies? If you missed

Chef Mark Smith’s Tweet, Greet, Meet and Eat this past Monday night, you probably don’t know about those things. But the 18 South Jersey Twitter users who gathered at the Tortilla Press with Chef Mark and his wife Lydia for Twitter discussion, hors d’eorves and margharitas know what I’m talking about.

The evening started out with Chef Mark welcoming the guests while his staff brought complimentary hors d’eorves (his guacamole is the best) and beverages to the tables. We each then got up and introduced ourselves, gave our Twitter names, and talked about how we heard of the tweetup. That was followed by a Q &A about anything and everything Twitter.

The goal of the evening was for “twitter users to meet at The Tortilla Press to share ideas about how twitter has helped them with their communications about & with the food scene in our area & the impact that Twitter has had on your involvement & awareness it.” That certainly happened.

The other thing that happened was that people who usually only see each other through Twitter avatars got to meet face to face. You know what?  South Jersey foodies are a great bunch of people. I finally got to meet John and Lisa from John and Lisa are Eating in South Jersey. You’d think for all I link to their website here that they were people I knew, but we’d never met before (for John and Lisa’s take on the evening, check out their blog post on it). I got to meet several other Twitter users who have made comments on this blog or have helped me promote this blog by retweeting my links on Twitter.

After the official tweetup was over, we were all invited to stay and enjoy a special three course meal that Chef Mark had prepared at a bargain price. I had a Jersey corn soup that was delicious, Chile Rellenos (a cheese stuffed poblano pepper, battered & lightly fried, topped with a tomato, cilantro & jalapeño sauce, served with red rice & black beans), and a Jersey peach and blueberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream that I could barely touch because although it was delicious, I was stuffed.

The fun thing about eating at a table with a bunch of foodies is that nobody minds when you say, “Don’t eat that yet. I want to take a picture first.”

Here are some of the comments, from Twitter of course, that have been made about the tweetup (some were tweeted during the event itself.)

“at the #tortillapresstweetup, commenting for @eggzinc. the food & margaritas are delicious already!” ericanardello

“#sjfood, had a great meal at the #tortillapresstweetup“  BrantBeaupre

“I am most impressed how easy it is to meet others with sim interests that are local too that otherwise i would not have met” KaySeitz

“I learned that twitter people are even nicer in person than they are on twitter” chefmarksmith

“Just got home a little while ago from Tweet Up at @tortillapress – we had a great time! #SJfood” EatinginSJersey

One thing that was decided on at the event was that we would start a new Twitter hashtag to identify when anyone tweets something that is both food and South Jersey related – it’s #SJfood. If you do a Twitter search for it, you’ll see that people are beginning to embrace the hashtag already.

Oh, and the Courier Post was there to take notes and pictures on the event. I don’t know if an article has been published yet, but pictures of the tweetup were published online the other day. Click here to see the photos.

I’m sure with the success of this event, there will be another tweetup in the future. I’ll let you know when and where both here and on Twitter.

In the meantime, I want to thank Chef Mark and Lydia for inviting us all into their restaurant to connect and enjoy a fabulous evening.