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At the main event there were about a dozen tents and four chefs’ tables offering food, mostly small tastes of one dish. A few offered more than one thing, like the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago and Fox & Obel (although I couldn’t figure out a good way to try Fox & Obel’s olive oil and vinegar with bread, since there were no plates on hand, just napkins). By contrast, there were several hundred wines from more than 75 wineries and distributors. Lots of very respectable names, too, from Cakebread to Caymus–but if this was supposed to be a wine festival with a little food and some cooking demos, it should have been advertised that way. As it was, by 2 PM Saturday there was a long line at every stall serving food.
And the quality of the food? Not bad, especially compared to what was served at the opening night reception (more on that later)–but mostly not life-changing either. The rotating format of the chefs’ tables, though, meant that to taste food from all the big names on the bill–like Stephanie Izard, Mindy Segal, Graham Elliot Bowles, and Kendal Duque–you’d have to be there for about five hours both Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t have that kind of stamina, especially since I seemed to be burning more calories walking around and standing in line for food than I was consuming–I actually got hungrier the longer I stayed.
