For Christmas this past year, Chad was kind enough to get us weekend passes to the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. We've gone to the Grand Tasting events for the past two years, but we figured since we'd have to get a hotel this year anyway, we might as well do it right.
Let me just say-- doing the full weekend thing is like a marathon-- you really need to be training for all the eating and learning how to pace yourself, or you'll be sorry.
Friday night started off with the Moet & Chandon BubbleQ, hosted by Al Roker. The food was great, especially the ribs from Mike & Amy Mills' of Chicago. We saw Martha Stewart cutting the line at Al Roker's station....kind of made me wonder if she got to cut the line in prison, too. And I guess no one told her, but her anorak or whatever the heck she was wearing wasn't quite the recommended "SOBE chic" attire. The champagne was also wonderful, but they ran out before the event was over...boo Moet & Chandon! Shaq showed up toward the end of the event, which was unexpected, but very cool. After that, we headed over to the Ocean Drive afterparty, which was probably a mistake for me. This event was sponsored by Absolut and they were making a bunch of drinks with their new "Apear" vodka, including an awesome pear mojito. I never want to have another pear mojito in my life. We'll leave it at that. Suffice it to say that I didn't really feel like drinking a whole lot at the Grand Tasting on Saturday.
The Grand Tasting on Saturday was a lot of fun, but I have to say I really think that last year's tasting was better. Delta did an awesome job with the check-in station, which in past years was just a bunch of FIU students handing out glasses and bags from cardboard boxes. It seemed like they sold a LOT more tickets for this year's event, because the tasting tents were absolutely packed. They opened at one, and by three a lot of restaurants had already run out of food. We spoke with the rep from Sheba Restaurant (where I had my birthday party last year) and he told us that they were told to prepare for 2,200 tasters-- I know that they sold at least 6,000 tickets to the event, and the Herald estimated it at more like 10,000. I think it's great that there's so much interest in the event, but if they're going to sell that many tickets, they really need to make sure that that many people are going to be accommodated. Also, it would be nice if more restaurants had access to electricity. I noticed last year that many restaurants were serving ceviche, and this year it seemed like every third restaurant had ceviche. Don't get me wrong, I love ceviche-- but there are only certain restaurants that I think highly enough of to want to eat their raw fish, especially if I know that fish has been sitting out on the beach for a couple hours.
We also enjoyed the food demos, although we only saw Giada, Emeril, and some of Dave Lieberman on Saturday. I felt sort of bad for Giada, because it seemed like none of the equipment wanted to work for her. I don't know whose fault that was, but seriously-- the girl can't do a pasta cooking demo if she can't get her water to boil. Emeril demoed a couple dishes from a spa menu that he's created for the Lowes hotel......which is kind of ironic. I mean, it's "pork fat" Emeril for goodness sake. Granted, all the food looked pretty good, especially the ahi tuna poke. It's definitely gonna need more sesame oil for me, though.
After eating all day, we headed back to the hotel to get ready to eat some more. (See? I bet you thought I was exaggerating three paragraphs ago when I said it was like a marathon). The dinner we attended was a five course tribute to Maguy Le Coze and Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin in New York. The dinner was very good, but some of the dishes were just kind of strange, to be honest. The first course was some kind of duck thing that reminded me of an olive loaf. It was a little round slice of something that appeared to have a type of blood orange jelly on the inside, surrounded by something that tasted a lot like pate, surrounded by what I think was duck. It was paired with an excellent Riesling, however. The second course was a dish that included some yummy prawns in a creamy corn sauce. I liked this one a lot. This was followed by foie gras raviolis with black truffles on top. These were also very good, but the dish was so rich I don't think I'd want to eat a serving any larger than what we were given. The next course was a sea bass topped with something that I couldn't quite identify. The topping could best be described as very thin, translucent strips of something that had a sort of rubbery consistency, covered in a gold spray. The bass was awesome, but I didn't eat a whole lot of the topping. The final dish of the main courses was Kobe beef cheek with some other stuff that I couldn't identify. Unfortunately, I really didn't care much for this dish. It was very odd, and I couldn't quite tell from the menu exactly what it was that I was eating. (It reminded me of a time back before I knew that 'haricots verts' were just green beans....). The dessert was a little chocolate tart-type thing that had nuts on the bottom-- it was great. After the tribute, the dinner finished up and we headed to the Belvedere afterparty at the National hotel. I hadn't been to the National before, so it was fun to check it out even though we only stayed about 15 minutes. Belvedere did an awesome job with decorating, though. They had a bar completely made out of ice, and they filled the pool with three foot high lit up letters that spelled out "Belvedere." In all, the evening was really nice, but after the long day of eating I was exhausted and ready for bed.
I can see that this is turning into a really long post, so you'll have to stay tuned for part II-- the Martha Stewart tribute brunch and Grand Tasting day II.
