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Scenes from the Wine & Food Fest Sunday Fair
A move downtown this year by the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival’s Sunday Fair resulted in a sellout, with a crowd placed by organizers at 2,500 people walking and tasting among more than 100 vendors at the Mexican American Cultural Center, encompassing artisan food vendors, craft brewers, distillers and more than 30 wineries, including seven from Texas.
Aside from gusty winds that swirled some dust and fluttered a few tent walls, cloudy skies and temperatures in the low 80s kept the festival’s closing event from dealing with the rain that dogged the fair the past two years, when it was held in Driftwood.
“There’s so many new people in Austin, that even though the festival’s been around 26 years, they didn’t really know about us,” said festival president Cathy Cochran-Lewis. “So we made a huge effort to rebrand the festival, to make sure that people understand that we were going to be downtown and that it was easy access.”
Standing in one of the longest lines at the Sunday Fair — for a cocktail made with an Acai-berry spirit called Veev mixed with herbs served in a little glass jar — Dana Huyler and MaryEllen Chilton of Austin said it was their ninth year at the event. “We went last year for mudfest,” Huyler said. The two pulled out a jar of strawberry balsamic black pepper preserves they’d bought from the Confituras food booth. “We’re happy that some of the vendors we support are out here,” Chilton said.
At the Pie Fixes Everything tent, Colleen Sommers was handing out samples of cranberry-apple and pecan sweet pies and savory bites made with spinach and mushroom. Over at Wiseman House Chocolates, owner Kevin Wenzel was handing out samples of a mocha crunch made with Hani Coffee from China. It’s the company’s sixth festival, and Wenzel said his presence has brought business to his shop in Hico, about two hours north of Austin.
The new restaurant Trace at the W Hotel in Austin was handing out samples of rabbit pate and petite chocolate-cherry tarts, while the liquor store chain Spec’s was handing out Reuben sandwiches by the handful.
One area of the fair was set aside for a taco showdown among Izzoz, Zandunga, Sazon, Takoba and Chilantro, with Zandunga winning the audience tally.
In the cultural center’s auditorium, cooking demonstrations included a burgers-and-cupcakes session with Diana McMillen of Midwest Living magazine, who counseled the audience to avoid squishing and nervously flipping burger patties on the grill. Her “Juicy Lucy” burger piled a fat handful of cheese between two burger patties, sealed at the edges.
Matt Lightner of Castagna restaurant in Portland, Ore., brought a farmer’s stand worth of foraged herbs to make a dish of seared duck breast with roasted sunchokes, including peppery wild ginger, lemony wood sorrel and wild licorice root.
“With our presentations, we try to bring you to where it is we’re thinking of,” Lightner said as assistants passed around plates of herbs for the audience to touch, smell and taste. In this case, Lightner was thinking of wild ducks and their habitat in the Pacific Northwest.
The fair positioned seven Texas wineries pouring samples along one row: Fall Creek, Becker, McPherson, Stone House, Llano Estacado, Messina Hof and Pheasant Ridge. At the Whole Foods Market tent, Trey McLean poured Duchman Family Winery vermentino from a tap.
In other festival news, the title of best dish for Thursday’s Stars Across Texas tasting event went to basil panna cotta from chef Josh Watkins of the Carillon.
The Maker’s Mark cocktail crown from Stars Across Texas went to Eddie “Lucky” Campbell of Bolsa in Dallas for his Art of War cocktail. The Steamboat Collins from Justin Burrow of Haven in Houston was the People’s Choice winner.
The festival, which ran Thursday through Sunday, featured food events from a charcuterie session to a sushi-and-sake pairing to a burger appreciation with food writer Josh Ozersky. “In the last year, our Austin profile in the culinary scene has really raised dramatically,” Cochran-Lewis said.
(American-Statesman photos by Mike Sutter)
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