The Dairy Free Traveler at the NYC Wine & Food Festival
Therese and I are looking forward to attending this year’s New York City Wine & Food Festival, held at numerous venues around the city. The Festival is taking place Thursday through Sunday, October 17-20, and we will be attending 5 events over 2 days, Saturday and Sunday.
Our visits to the Festival events are in effect in lieu of a vacation this fall. After moving and getting our daughter married this summer, we just couldn’t stomach shelling out the money to go to Europe or some other exotic place in September or October. So we decided instead to stay close to home and take advantage of the touristy fun things that are going on in New York City in the coming months. And we particularly focused on making a weekend of it at the Wine & Food Festival.
So here is what we are going to attend (out of all the many options)!
Saturday, October 19:
Greenmarket Brunch hosted by Geoffrey Zakarian, 11a to 1p
Pitch Me: How to Turn Your Love For Food Into a Successful Culinary Business, 1 to 2pm
Tartine-Making Master Class hosted by Alain Coumont, 3 to 6pm
I like the idea of doing a mixture of things on Saturday – not just eating good food, but also learning some cooking techniques and attending a lecture on becoming a culinary professional.
To start on Saturday, we chose the Geoffrey Zakarian brunch. We’ve been fans of Chef Zakarian for a number of years, enjoying his television work as a judge on Chopped and watching him become an Iron Chef on the Iron Chef America competition two seasons ago. But we’ve never eaten his food, so we thought it would be great to have a chance to sample his creations. The question – and it is a good one – is whether the brunch will indeed feature his food. Hosting may mean that he is just there to smile and wave and press the flesh. We will see! If I do meet Chef Zakarian, my mother has instructed me to tell him that my 80 year-old mother has a crush on him!
We’ve been to the venue where the brunch is being held, the Biergarten at the Standard before. In fact, that’s where we attended our sole event at last year’s Wine & Food Festival, the Oyster Bash. So we have an idea of what the space is like, and how it is likely to be set up. There will most likely be stations offering different food, and I may have to ask on the spot about the presence of dairy, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find some good things to eat.
Next, we will attend a lecture on turning your love of food into a business – a bit of professional development for me. Chef Tyler Florence, TV personality Rachael Ray, Food Network exec Bob Tuschman, restaurateur Luke Ostrom and Quirky.com CEO Ben Kaufman will share their insights, moderated by food and travel writer Steve Dolinsky. This is being held in a theater called Bumble and Bumble that I’ve never been to, but it is on the west side, not too far from the Biergarten. And the theater is not huge, so even if we get there late and have to sit in the back, I’m sure we will be able to hear.
Finally for Saturday, we will attend a demonstration class at the International Culinary Center on tartine-making led by Alain Coumont, the Belgian chef who started the successful Le Pain Quotidien franchise. When I saw the word “tartine” I thought of Tarte Tatin and thought this would be about making sweet tarts (with plenty of butter), but looking further, I see it is all about making good breads and then creating open-faced sandwiches. I am prepared if there is dairy involved in the recipes to just watch and learn, and then try it at home in my own way, without dairy – in my experience there is not usually much at Le Pain Quotidien that is dairy free – but I have an open mind. I certainly would be happy to gain some insights into bread-making, since I have not done that in a long long time and would like to get back into baking bread at home.
Sunday, October 20:
Grand Tasting with Culinary Demonstrations, noon to 6pm
Ivan Ramen’s Taste of Tokyo Dinner, 7 to 10pm
We are just attending two events on Sunday, but the first is the mammoth Grand Tasting taking place on Pier 94 from noon to 6pm. I gather the space is enormous – there are supposed to be numerous tastings around the pier going on until 5, and then there are two stages that will have demonstrations and book signings going on simultaneously all day.
The culinary celebrities appearing on these stages are a who’s-who of the food world, especially of the Food Network world. On the north stage there will be Rocco Dispirito, Anne Burrell, Sunny Anderson, Justin Warner and Damaris Phillips (the last two winners of the Next Food Network Star competitions) and Scott Conant. On the south stage will be Andrew Zimmern, Giada de Laurentiis, Bobby Flay, Michael Symon and Robert Irvine. We are probably not going to be there for the full six hours – the people appearing later in the afternoon like Michael Symon and Robert Irvine are high on our list of people we would like to meet. By the same token, we don’t want to stay too late, because we have a long taxi ride (or multiple public transportation rides) to get to our next event, which will be taking place in Soho.
After walking around for the afternoon, it will be nice to have a sit-down dinner to finish up the day and the weekend. I only recently heard about Ivan Orkin for the first time, but we are very excited to experience his ramen noodle dish creations. I know that he mixes Japanese, American and French influences – I wonder if that means that he puts butter or cream into his ramen and other dishes. Of course, I will be investigating his recipes ahead of time, and will talk to the waiters about my allergy when we get to the restaurant.
So as you can see, we have a variety of events planned, and we’re very excited to be doing our touristy stay-cation weekend. I am happy to say that as of the writing of this post, many of the incredible events taking place at the Festival are not sold out – yes, you can still buy tickets – and that includes the 5 events we are attending. If what I have written makes your mouth water and your pulse quicken, it is not too late to make your own plans to be part of the Festival! I hope to see you there!
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