The annual Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival attracts many of the biggest stars in the U.S culinary scene. It’s a great time to grab some sun in Miami and on South Beach when it’s cold just about everywhere else, which at least in part gets chefs down to the tropics to cook at signature events like Burger Bash. For the Italophiles out there, SOBEWFF also regularly features Italian-themed events and internationally known Italian food and drink personalities. This year’s festival, taking place February 22-25, 2024, has no shortage of pasta, pizza, and spritzes on the menu.
First, the bad news: It’s too late to score tickets to Evan Funke’s pasta-making master class or for Dario Cecchini’s dinner with Stefano Secchi and Nancy Silverton, to name a few already sold-out events. That’s to be expected. SOBEWFF events nearly always sell out in advance. Now for the good news: several other Italian events still have tickets available (for now), offering guests the opportunity to see Italian celeb butcher and restaurateur Cecchini, Food Network host Alex Guarnaschelli, and others up close.
Appetito was on hand in the Design District, Miami’s luxurious neighborhood just across Biscayne Bay from Miami Beach, during last year’s signature A Taste of Italy event, which was hosted by Giada De Laurentiis. The taste-around featured creative Italian dishes from more than a dozen South Florida Italian restaurants and drinks including Italian wines and Aperol Spritzes as well as cocktails from sponsor Campari.
This year, Cecchini is stepping into the hosting role of A Taste of Italy, which also takes place in the Design District, on Thursday, February 22, along with the co-hosts of Food Network’s Italian cooking competition series Ciao House, Guarnaschelli and Gabriele Bertaccini. The lineup includes South Florida standouts like Italian Food Company, Ft. Lauderdale’s Michael Ferraro, and Robbie Felice, the New Jersey chef behind several Italian restaurants including the red-hot pastaRAMEN in Montclair, NJ.
Below are links to buy tickets to the Taste of Italy taste-around, which features chefs and restaurants serving up a sample dish or two, as well as to a noteworthy Italian dinner and an Italian wine tasting. All events with tickets still available are here on the SOBEWFF website.
Jon & Vinny’s x Boia De: A Dinner Hosted by Jon Shook, Vinny Dotolo, Alex Meyer, and Luciana Giangrandi, Thursday, February 22, 7-10pm, SGWS Wynwood, $350
The duo behind Los Angeles standout Jon & Vinny’s teams up with the duo behind Miami’s always-hot Boia De for a meeting of great Italian-thinking culinary minds.
A Taste of Italy, Thursday, February 22, 8-11 pm, Jungle Plaza—Miami Design District, $195
As described above, the taste-around features more than a dozen chefs and restaurants from South Florida and beyond, with hosts Dario Cecchini, Alex Guarnaschelli, Gabriele Bertaccini, and presenting sponsor Campari.
Italian Wines of Ethica: An Immersive Journey into a Bright Future, Friday, February 23, 3-4 pm, Eden Roc Miami Beach, $125
A Wine Spectator-hosted seminar featuring tastings of wines from Italy’s most renowned winemakers and regions, with a mix of prosecco from La Gioiosa and Soave from Anselmi, as well as regional reds from Piedmont and Tuscany, and more from the Miami-based importer of Italian wines Ethica.
