Eater revealed their “Eater Young Guns Class of 2012″ yesterday, a selection of “the most promising newbies in food, wine and hospitality, as selected by industry leaders.”

Wow, it’s about damn time an event like this happened.

“We often hear of the successes of José Andrés and Michael Voltaggio but we never hear of the younger cooks who work alongside them, this event celebrates them” said Raphael Brion, editor of Eater National. The 2012 Eater Young Guns Official Selection Committee was pretty fierce, consisting of such big hitters as José Andrés actually and Suzanne Goin. There were 50 finalists but only 16 winners.

And it was pretty cool, Eater celebrates in style, as apparent by their selection of the freaking rooftop at The London as the official venue for the event. I guess the extreme luxury lifestyle phenomena associated in modern youth culture (looking at you YOUNG MONEY CASH MONEY BILLIONAIRES) is also pretty big in the food industry, YOUNG MONEY CASH MONEY CHEFS?

Some of the winning chefs were flown in from around the country to share their fresh techniques and chaste egos. In particular, Angela Majko of Uchiko in Austin, Jeremiah Langhorne of McCrady’s in Charleston, Matthew Rudofker of Momofuku Ssam Bar NYC and some other guy with a beard who was serving a salty ass vegetable tart.

Pickled shrimp on a stick by Jeremiah Langhorne at Mccrady’s

Morels, foraged in Charleston North Carolina and prepared by Jeremiah Langhorne

Of course, there were some home grown budding cooks and food people properly representin’ too.

Alex Brown, General Manager at Gourmet Imports was rolling deep with some hardcore cheese and meat bling, his cheeseboard was probably worth more than my scooter and my rent for the next half-year. Complete with a whole fucken shoulder of Jamón ibérico de Bellota and five nameless cheeses whose smell I still can’t wash off from my hands.

Cole Dickinson of Ink showed up with his interpretation of BBQ salmon, meaning cured salmon with BBQ powder and corn chips that required five different steps to make. Complicatedness seemed to be the prevailing element through out the event, there was a sous vide machine tucked away at a corner of Jeremiah Langhorne Mccrady’s booth, god bless that competitive youthful spirit.

All in all, the event was a success, despite the selective invite list that excluded the usual L.A. food communicator suspects but rich in L.A. restaurant P.R. peeps, meaning mostly L.A. stereotype-standard blondes and people in designer clothing.

A nameless cook from Ink said it best as most of the beautiful people walked straight by their welcoming booth without even looking at their offering, “Yeah, it seems like everyone is coming just to hang out and not actually eat.”

I did find it kind of odd that this was also the first food event that still had food flowing until the last minute too. And then people wonder why the L.A. dining scene is never taken as serious as other U.S. food metropolises.

Nonetheless, congrats to all the young guns! Perhaps one day there will be a Young Guns “Food Writing Edition” or something…be still my heart, that day will come soon.