Austin Food and Wine Festival Recap 2017

Nate and I spent the weekend at the Austin Food and Wine Festivaland we had the best time!! I hope I can go back to the festival next year! Here’s a recap of the weekend:

First off, I pretty much always either had a glass of wine in my hand…

Or a bite of food…

I was eating and drinking nonstop! So much fun. I had never been before this year, so if you’re like me and want to know the basics Food and Wine Festival, here they are:

What’s the Food and Wine Festival?

Austin Food and Wine Festival is a 3-day food and drink festival at Auditorium Shores. Food and Wine Magazine only does a few of these festivals around the country, and Austin is lucky to be one of the host cities! It’s basically a big party for foodies!

What do you do there?

Eat! Drink! Be merry! But really….there’s so much food! There are 6 giant tasting tents full of booths. So you walk through the tents, stopping at the tables that look interesting, and you taste whatever you want! Lots of the featured chefs and restaurants are from Austin, but there’s also food and wine from all over the world. There are also special sessions in in additional tents. Most of these last about 45 minutes. They’re typically tastings from a certain wine region or maker, or a celebrity chef doing a demo. And there are always lots of samples! There’s also a grilling demo with Fort Worth chef Tim Love, a few fire pits with (you guessed it…) more food tastings, and demos set up from companies like KitchenAid where you can look through all their equipment.

How much does it cost?

Ok, so it’s not cheap… Here are the ticket prices. But something I like about the Food and Wine Festival is that once you buy your ticket, you’re done! You won’t be paying a penny for food or drinks or entertainment at the festival. With a festival like Austin City Limits, it’s easy to spent $50+ a day on food and beer….but at the Food and Wine Festival, you might pay $8 for parking, and you have the option of buying cookbooks to have the chef sign, but that’s it.

Haha….I love the expression that man who’s walking by on the right. Everyone at this festival is so happy! I mean, how could you not be?

Check out that paella pan!! Holy HUGE! They were cooking mushroom fideos at one of the fire pits to feed a big ol’ crowd of people!

And here’s a picture of the other fire pit. Everything smelled so good. 

On Friday night, Nate and I went to the Rock Your Taco event. This was one of my favorite parts! There were 15 celebrity chefs who each created a taco. Guests got to taste each taco, and judges picked their favorite. Tyson Cole won this year! His taco was insanely delicious (smoked mass, asian pear, yuzu kasha, and ramp.)

I also loved the dessert taco that Christina Tosi (of Milk Bar) created. It was a corn cake taco with hazelnut crunch, strawberry crema, fresh strawberry, and freeze-dried corn. I went back for seconds on this one!

Here’s another shot of the fire pit on Saturday. All three of the fire pits were going all day long, so the whole festival smelled smokey and delicious!

A bite of buttermilk waffle and pork belly from Forthwright. I’m telling ya….no one goes hungry!

This picture is from the Drink Like a Billionaire tasting with Mark Oldman. I loved this session! Mark has such a fun personality. He has a lot to share about wine, but he says it without being pretentious. He’s goofy and personable! This was the first session of the morning, so all that wine was set in front of me at 11:30 am. Haha! The drinking starts early..

I bought his book as my festival souvenir and had him sign it. Can’t wait to read it!

Ha, see that gaudy kimono he’s wearing? He rocked that for the entire 45-minute talk. He’s definitely not lacking in the personality department..

What’s my opinion on the Food and Wine Festival? LOVED IT! Can’t wait to go back! I think I might enjoy it even more than Austin City Limits! They’re obviously two very different festivals, but they’re both in Austin, around the same cost, and about the same length of time. But if I had to choose just one to attend, I think it might be the Food and Wine Festival!

The only bad part about weekend festivals? Getting out of bed on Monday morning… Haha.

Thanks for stopping by!

Kelsey

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Claudia
7 years ago

That is a giant paella pan! Sounds like such a fun event!

– Claudia
http://www.justalittleblush.com/

Emily
7 years ago

Okay, I’m convinced. 🙂 I’ve gotta go next year! It looks like you had a blast!

Anita
7 years ago

Amazing! I went a few years ago and loved it! So much good food and drinks for sure. Glad you had a good time this year!

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5 years ago

[…] it just took us about 5 minutes to get in. I had a flashback of going to the Food and Wine festival back in 2017 and the awful 30 minute line just to get in the front entrance. Thankfully, this festival is […]

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