Festival Wrap-Up
After some reflection, here’s a few random thoughts on the recent Saveur Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival. Though the turnout for a couple of the barbecue tours was pretty small, the folks who did attend seemed to have a great time. They tumbled off the buses stuffed and smiling, vaguely redolent of smoke. With as many barbecue joints as there are in Austin proper and Central Texas, there’s plenty of future tour destinations if this event becomes a regular feature. I finished hosting the local tour just in time to make it to the Edible Endings event in the Driskill lobby, and what a delightful time that was! Everything from sophisticated Roscar and Passion Food chocolate truffles paired with Becker Merlot and Llano Estacado Port, respectively, to Kathy Leverett‘s down-home blackberry cobbler served with a luscious Australian Ruthglen Muscat and Marta Guzman‘s tres leches cake with the Terre Rouge Fortified Muscat. The presentations were lovely, and the pairings excellent. Why this exceptional event doesn’t have its own room at the Stars Across Texas Grand Tasting is a mystery to me. Dessert and pastry professionals are every bit as deserving of the Friday night spotlight as any other chefs, and it would be the perfect venue for vintners to introduce their dessert wines to the larger audience. I’m also curious about when the festival board is going to break down and move the monster Friday-night tasting event to a venue designed to handle it, such as the banquet facilities at the new Hilton or the Convention Center. At least two events appeared to suffer from the “hip factor” of their chosen locations. Limited space and an absence of available parking plagued both the Farm to Market to Table luncheon in the rainy Hotel San José parking lot and the Saturday night shindig at the Austin City Limits soundstage. Both are worthy activities that deserve a better showcase, such as Boggy Creek Farm or the Barr Mansion for the lunch tasting, and perhaps a return to the Broken Spoke for the singing chef honky-tonk party. The Saturday afternoon cookout at the TDS Exotic Game Ranch was the clear winner again this year. The coterie of visiting East Coast chefs and restaurateurs were beside themselves over how much fun they had, and why not? There was picture-perfect weather, plenty of marvelous food, wine and spirits, a skeet shooting competition, very accessible foodie celebrities, multiple national TV crews – a great afternoon complete with Jimmy LaFave‘s music as an Austintatious soundtrack (and the mesmerized 2-year-old dancing and playing air guitar in front of the band channeled an Armadillo World Headquarters aspect that was just the icing on the cake). It’s parties like that one that will keep people coming back year after year, count on it. Heartiest kudos to Susan Duke, Dawn Orsak, Pam Blanton, and the small but mighty festival staff (plus all their volunteers) for a job well done.
Chalk Art Festival
This Saturday, April 24, is the date for the third annual Austin Italian Chalk Art Festival, a Renaissance-style street painting party that benefits the National Organization to Treat A-T, a cancer-causing childhood disease. Chalk artists will turn pavement into works of art at both Central Market (4001 N. Lamar, 206-1000; 4521 Westgate Blvd., 899-4300) stores from 9am to 5pm on Saturday. There will be live music, silent auctions, Italian foods, and a special area for kids to create their own paintings. Celebrity guest judges are the dynamic Houston uncle-and-nephew chef team of Damian Mandola and Johnny Carrabba, founders of the Carrabba’s restaurant chain, cookbook authors, and popular stars of the television cooking show Cucina Amore. For more information about sponsoring a square at the festival or about the disease A-T, call 323-5161.
This article appears in April 23 • 2004.