Turns out it's the foodies at South Beach Wine & Food
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/restaurants/sfl-south-beach-wine-food-fest-022410,0,3511253.storyBy Douglas Hanks
The Miami Herald
February 24, 2010
Dinner for two is $400 at Thursday's burger bash, and $700 for Friday's champagne barbecue. A bargain compared with Saturday's tribute dinner, where two tickets tops the $1,000 mark.
Not hungry? Stop by a 60-minute wine tasting Sunday for a mere $85 a head.
One can spot evidence of the recession in the South Beach Wine & Food Festival's ninth year. Delta pulled back its sponsor dollars, events have been slower to sell out, and it's easier to find tickets under $100.
Yet the four-day circuit of parties in Miami Beach benefiting Florida International University's hospitality school remains both indulgent and popular, despite the harsh economy. Demand appears to be holding strong -- organizers expect record revenues of just over $7.6 million and the festival's website reports sellouts for about 70 percent of the nearly four dozen events.
"I don't want to tell you it's recession-proof,'' said festival founder Lee Brian Schrager. "People are buying fewer tickets. But more people are buying.''
Schrager expects about 9,000 people for Saturday's Grand Tasting tent party on the sands off Ocean Drive, where tickets cost $213 and sold out three weeks ago. There attendees can drink wine and sample chicken satay from Philippe Chow, shrimp and lobster sliders from STK Miami and dozens of other small plates from area restaurants.
In all, about 53,000 people are expected to attend at least one event, with ticket sales generating about $4 million, according to a budget filed with Miami Beach.
Sponsored by the Food Network, the festival captures the demand not just for haute cuisine but also culinary celebrity.
Food Network stars including Paula Deen and Emeril Lagasse headline some of the most popular events, while Daniel Boulud and other luminaries on the schedule now enjoy fame for their appearances on Top Chef and other shows.
Boulud, a regular Top Chef judge and a renowned French chef, is the guest of honor at the tribute dinner for nearly 600 people Saturday at the Loews Miami Beach. Tickets cost $525 a piece, and sold out in early January, Schrager said.
For some, the prices defy the normal economics of fine food.
"You don't think of paying $250 a person when it comes to trying different forms of cheeseburgers,'' Adam Rosenfeld, a 32-year-old financial advisor, said of Thursday's Burger Bash hosted by Rachael Ray. ``That's a pretty damn expensive cheeseburger.''
Even so, Rosenfeld was a loyal Burger Bash attendee until this year, when he decided the lines were too long for the nearly 30 burger stations.
But he's hitting four other festival parties, including Thursday's Miami Magazine Patron tequila party and Friday's BubbleQ at the Delano.
For $350 a head, BubbleQ guests drink champagne and taste barbecue dishes by 30 chefs, including Lagasse. Organizers capped ticket sales at 2,500, and the event sold out earlier this month.
"I bet if we had 1,000 more tickets for Burger Bash or BubbleQ, we could have sold them,'' said Schrager, vice president of corporate communications at Southern Wine & Spirits of America, the festival's exclusive provider of wine and liquor.
Schrager said he fields about 100 inquiries a day for tickets, and scalping sites like stubhub.com and gotickets.com had active resale markets for the event this week. The Food Network pays $150,000 as event sponsor, but that doesn't mean an unlimited supply of tickets.
The cable channel's contract specifices the network receive exactly 30 tickets each for Burger Bash and BubbleQ and another 50 for each day's Grand Tasting parties. Organizers submitted the contract in their successful application for a $70,000 Miami Beach tourism grant.
Tickets went on sale in late October, and some events, including the Burger Bash, sold out right away. But the majority of events had tickets available through January and February, which Schrager blamed on the recession.
Still it took about two hours for Schrager to sell out 120 tickets for the recently announced earthquake benefit dinner Wednesday night at South Beach's popular Haitian restaurant, Tap Tap. Starring Boulud and Food Network "Iron Chef'' Masaharu Morimoto, the dinner will feature Haitian dishes prepared by various chefs. Price per head: $325.
"As much as it's affected us all -- and the festival -- people still want to forget about the problems of the recession,'' said Kris Wessel, owner of the Red Light Little River restaurant in Miami and a festival chef. He's making a grilled bleu cheese sandwich and steak for the BubbleQ and shrimp-stuffed squash for the Haitian dinner.
"I don't know how people continue to pay for these tickets,'' Wessel said. "But they're doing it.''
Schrager said the festival considered lowering ticket prices this year, given the ugly economy. Sponsor dollars were harder to come by. Delta, which once funded a welcome center at the tasting tents, pulled back and just provided free airfare for the celebrity chefs. Other sponsors demanded more perks for the $3 million the festival expects to collect from sponsors. ``We made deals we never would have made,'' he said.
Schrager did add more under-$100 events featuring wine and cocktails, such as an hour-long seminar Sunday on pairing wine with buffalo wings, pizza and other pedestrian fare. "We had to add events that weren't so pricey,'' Schrager said.
He pointed to a Sunday night cocktail party hosted by Guy Fieri, a Food Network star known for touring the nation's diners and dive restaurants. It cost $75 to get in, and tickets sold out quickly.
"I'm kicking myself for doing $75,'' Schrager said. "I think we could have sold a Guy Fieri party at $100 and sold out.''
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