The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival: Are you going?
In about a month the tents will start going up for the inaugural Atlanta Food & Wine Festival in Midtown.
Top culinarians from throughout the South and a number of out-of-town visitors will make this festival — as educational as it is sybaritic — unlike any other the city has seen.
It will also be the most expensive: tickets start at $500 for those who plan on attending all three days, though single day passes and one-shot dealios for the tasting tents will be available for less.
Here is a story I wrote about the festival that appeared in yesterday’s paper.
Who here is planning to go?
accessAtlanta Partner Sites
Sections
Advertise on accessAtlanta.com »
Reach the audience you want by advertising on accessAtlanta.com
Join the Access Atlanta Network »
Advertisers and Publishers, expand your reach by joining the Access Atlanta Network.
Tell us what you think about the site
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement | About our ads
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
18 comments Add your comment
Allison
April 18th, 2011
4:27 pm
Not me. I love food but this thing is way too expensive.
Theresa
April 18th, 2011
4:37 pm
I’d love to go, but it’s too pricy for me.
Dunwoody Don
April 18th, 2011
5:00 pm
If a 1-day pass is no more than a meal at Eugene’s, count me in. Otherwise, fugetaboutit.
KEAD
April 18th, 2011
5:00 pm
I’d love to go, and I’m delighted to see Atlanta hosting an event like this, but like the two previous commenters, it’s too much for my pocketbook at this time. I’ll cheer from afar, though.
Matt
April 18th, 2011
6:30 pm
The pricing does not look too bad if you just want to go to the food pavillion one day(it’s still $75 a person, but for the caliber of food you will probably be getting that’s not insanely expensive). But if you want to attend any of the seminars or extra dinners/events it starts to get expensive real fast. I’m kind of glad an event like this is on the pricier side so that it will hopefully not be a huge packed crowd like Taste of Atlanta or Taste of the Highlands.
RK
April 18th, 2011
8:28 pm
There’s no way that this should be more expensive than Charleston’s…
Carter
April 18th, 2011
8:57 pm
Where else can you get access to hundreds of chefs, participate in hands-on seminars and demonstrations and taste samples of incredible southern food and wine? This Festival isn’t any more expensive than others of its kind across the country. It’s about time Atlanta and the rest of the South showed us what it could do – I salute the people who have come together to put this on and am excited to have just bought a weekend pass!
Harold
April 18th, 2011
9:20 pm
After seeing their prices for X & Grits, ain’t NO way. IF i’ma spend that money it’ll be on going somewhere where they ain’t no grits passed off as any part of fined dining
Vote for Pedro
April 18th, 2011
9:32 pm
This festival starts the final day of Microsoft Tech Ed, so the expense account nerdy moneybags coming here for the Microsoft conference are the apparent targets of these food tents. The prices are ludicrous and I don’t mean the rap er unless it’s Tom The Supposedly Straight Bear reaping everything from our pocketbooks. I predict a major flop as the nerds go to the Varsity and Waffle House because that’s all they found on atl cityguide dot com. Just dont pay the ATL for a food cart on the next block, whatever you do.
Barb
April 19th, 2011
9:28 am
Scratching my head. Unless they’re already sold out, $500 isn’t the lowest price. I saw $75 tickets online. I have a Saturday day pass that I got for $250 and feel like I’m getting a big deal. I’m doing a couple of food classes, watching a demo and doing a wine tasting and then get to go to the outdoor stuff. This thing isn’t for everyone but I’m glad it’s coming to Atlanta. The line-up is pretty impressive.
John Kessler
April 19th, 2011
10:46 am
Barb: Tickets start at $500 for those who plan on attending all three days, though single day passes will be available for less. I’m sure you’ll get a lot of bang for your $250 bucks with the Saturday pass!
Kirk
April 19th, 2011
10:53 pm
They really need to simplify the ticket structure – I’d love to go, and would be willing to spend a decent amount if I think what I’m getting will be worth it, but my eyes glazed over looking at that ticket page. Too many options with long descriptions that don’t really tell me exactly what I’m getting (i.e. I have to click around looking at what’s included where, etc).
Art
April 20th, 2011
3:57 pm
I have to agree with Kirk… The’re more ticket prices than the coach seat fares on an Air France A380… I wish it were simpler and more specific as to what you’re getting for your money.
jim
April 20th, 2011
8:31 pm
$5.00 sounds good.
JW Simms
April 20th, 2011
11:23 pm
The weekend is packed but I don’t think that is a bad thing. I bought a day pass without issue. The ticket page has a lot on it but it also has 1-2-3 instructions. You don’t even have to read all of the stuff on there. Just click on the buy tickets button and select your classes. The details are there too. Not that complicated.
Dominique Love
April 21st, 2011
9:04 am
Kirk and Art – this is great insight. We made a few updates to our site over the weekend and I’m afraid we overcomplicated things! Our web team is working on adjustments so the page will be easier to navigate and to find the answer to your question “what do I get”.
A top-line answer about what you get:
1) Weekend Packages (3-Day, VIP and Connoisseur) give ticket holders:
– 10 hours of classes
– 4 Tasting Tent & Street Cart sessions
– Discounts to evening dinners and events
– There are additional perks that are added at the VIP and Connoisseur levels
2) Day Passes – give ticket holders access to classes and Tasting Tents & Street Carts for a single day.
3) Single Access – for entrance into the Tasting Tent & Street Carts only.
This is a big weekend and there are a lot of offerings – thank the enthusiasm of our Founders Council and curators who designed all the programming. But we don’t want the many offerings to be a deterent, so thanks for the feedback.
I hope this helps!
Thanks,
- Dominique Love (AF&WF Co-Founder)
HotlantaHobo
April 21st, 2011
10:00 am
Hmmm for the big fromage package ($2500) you could fly to Paris or Barcelona and eat in at least three of the top restaurants of the world. ($1000 air and 3x $500 each reastaurant) I imagine if you went to Lyon Paul Bocuse would stop by your table if he was in. Or his son Jerome. Or any of the other proprietors of their temples.
You could fly to New Orleans for $250 and feast in 15 of their finest at $150 each.
Is this some kind of joke?
OTP Foodie
April 21st, 2011
12:55 pm
Would love to go, but just out of my price range. Sigh….