The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival
The city of Atlanta is a beautiful one filled with amazing diverse people from different ethnicities. Known for producing some of the best most diverse musical acts like John Mayer, Ludacris, and Usher, this city is quite popular for its southern hospitality. Millions of tourists troop down to Atlanta at different times of the year to experience this; from great hospitality and friendly people to beautiful parks. However, one of the greatest attraction is the food. Atlanta is blessed with so many farmers market, food trucks, and is also homes to a lot of award-winning chefs. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are a lot of food festivals in this city.One of the most popular, however, is the Atlanta Food &Wine Festival.
The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival is a four-day culinary experience, founded by entrepreneurs Dominique Love and Elizabeth Feichter in 2010. This extraordinary event was put together in a bid to celebrate and recognize the diverse and rich food and beverage tradition of the South, from Texas to the District of Columbia. This festival is carefully planned out by an Advisory Council of 91 award-winning talent from 13 Southern and the District of Columbia.
The festival is a one part conference and one part party event. It offers carefully tailored programs to help enlighten consumers on the intricacies of southern food and drinks. The festival also celebrates the distinct flavors of foods from other southern regions from around the globe like; South America, South Africa, Southern Hemisphere, and South-of-the-border (Mexico, Peurto Rico, Cuba, and the Carribean).
The 2017 Atlanta Food & Wine Festival: Know The South!, was an array of activities and special dishes that would have your taste buds excited. Held on the 2nd of June, 2017 Atlanta opened its doors to people from all over the world to celebrate exotic dishes from the South. I say lucky because, if you haven’t attended any then you truly can’t tell how fun and enlightening it was. It was my third time attending and I can easily say this was the best out of them all. The event led on for 3 days at Midtown Atlanta and included learning experiences, tasting opportunities, dinner, and events. I documented every intriguing aspect of the event and even got media credentials for my attendance.
There were different chefs from different parts of the South who came to show out for their cultures. The activities were well organized and were as follows;
Learning Experience. There was a provision of classes for over 30-140 people, which included cooking demonstrations, tasting seminars, panels discussions, and pairing sessions.
Tasting Tents
The tasting seminars provided the opportunity to taste several dishes. I enjoyed several cuisines from South Carolina, Alabama, Tennesse, and Louisiana. However, my absolute favorites were; The Two Urban Licks Brisket which I loved for its juicy flavor, and the Smoked Pastrami from Fox Bros BBQ in Atlanta.
My preferred choice of wine after tasting was Ken Foster from South Africa.
The Atlanta Food & Drink Festival is undoubtedly the best out of all other food festivals in Atlanta. This can be confirmed by its innovative ideas, attention to detail, pricing, and truly embracing the goal of enlightening the public on global Southern dishes.