We’ve done the Do at the Zoo at the Denver Zoo for a few years now. We missed last year, but 2009 and 2008 were both good fun. The event page describes it thusly:
Take a summer stroll while you sip cocktails, dine on creative cuisine from some of Denver’s best restaurants and enjoy the area’s finest live entertainment. It’s an annual “can’t-miss” event!
Oh, and there’s a zoo, too.
Essentially, for a (not cheap) ticket, you get to wander the zoo, drink from the numerous open bars scattered around, and (more importantly) eat samples from booths set up by some dozens of top Denver restaurants (and several specialty liquor manufacturers). It’s definitely a “fast before you go” kind of an event, which, since I was fasting earlier this week, was just what I needed.
It’s reminiscent of its sister event, Brew at the Zoo, which has cheaper tickets and focuses on 40-odd local breweries. Except it’s a lot, lot better.
Crowds: BatZ has been getting steadily worse in terms of crowds, all there to guzzle beer, all forming long lines, and usually wiping out any food booths far too early in the evening. The problems have been, in part, due to all the beer drinking, but also it’s just not well-managed in terms of space and setup.
This year’s DatZ was positively spacious. About 60% of the zoo was open — all the way looping around to the new Asian Tropics area they’re constructing (and were providing tours/observations of), and circling around the legacy pachyderm house. The booths were set up well, with minimal chokepoints (only a couple of places, and there the problem wasn’t lines so much as people just milling). We rarely had to wait more than a minute or two to get to anything we wanted to eat or drink.
The little mini-tables were set up better than in past years, but there were still areas that could have used them (and other areas where they weren’t needed). I’m hoping at least one of the many volunteers was tasked with taking notes of that sort of thing.
There were a few booths that had run out of foodstuff (or drinks in a few cases) by 9 or so (the event ran from 7-10), but they were by far the exceptions, and we could have gorged ourselves still further if we weren’t already full by then.
Advice: Turn left from the entrance. Everyone goes right, and those booths crowd up a lot faster (to the extend they do).
Beautiful People: Though this is positioned as an upscale event — and folks are encouraged to dress in “tropical cocktail party” style, it seemed more casual than at events past — still plenty of cocktail dresses (often in jungle prints) and suits and date shoes and ties — but also plenty of folks in shorts and polo shirts (we were somewhere between).
As advice, don’t wear spike heels you don’t want to be walking in on hard surfaces for multiple hours. And if you do, skip the tour of the Asian Tropics that requires you to walk across gravel. Hi-larious …
Food: A grand selection, as always. And, as always, the advice is to share with your partner, lest you fill up way too quickly. Also, eschew (or eat around) buns and mini-tortillas, for similar reasons.
Slaws of various sorts were the accompaniment of the evening. Margie commented that beef was out, pork, pork bellies, chicken, buffalo, even goat were in. Cupcakes and similar compact desserts (cake! on a stick!) were popular. Too many places trying to do fancy (buffalo on a crostini with cranberry-mango-salmon chutney and ginger-tofu demiglace) for my taste, but plenty of others I didn’t turn my nose up at.
Music: Meh. Not why I was there, but there was music at both ends of the zoo, played decently well and not too terribly loudly.
Recycling: Denver Zoo is the first in the nation to be ISO-14001 certified for its sustainability. That’s visible in the plans for the Asian Tropics, which will filter and recycle much of its water, rather than dumping it, and will be powered solely by solar and biomass conversion (essentially burning animal poop).
That was also visible in all the recycling being done for the DatZ. There were numerous trash stations, manned by volunteers, who helped sort out glass bottles from the nearly-all-compostable dinnerware (napkins, bowls, plates, cups, utensils). Ironically, the only thing that wasn’t compostable was the plastic champagne flutes at the front entrance.
Overall: A great event, lots of good food, nice to see the zoo, pleasant weather (the threatening clouds never let loose, and it was cool and nicel breezy), and it was good to be able to do it for a good cause.
We’ve given up on BatZ, but we’ll be planning on attending DatZ next year!