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By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com
Wine, more wine, great food that’s basically San Diego restaurant hopping, craft beers, spirits and a lively atmosphere all describe the San Diego Wine & Food Festival in 2022.
If there’s one big takeaway – and it’s consistent year after year – is is this is more than a series of wine and food events. They are San Diego happenings. People go to them not just to sip and eat but to socialize in a grand way.
Let’s face it, it’s a lot more entertaining to excitedly share your favorite restaurants, wineries and other participants with others when you come across something truly tasty. Pair this with the friendly personalities of San Diegans and you have a recipe for sustained success.
PubClub.com was at three of the annual festival’s marquee events during the weekend of Nov. 11-13 and provides this comprehensive review of them.
San Diego Wine & Food Festival Grand Decant
This year’s Friday night wine tasting was held at Liberty Station for the first time and, like always, it was a true wine lover’s paradise. There were rows of wines from all over California and beyond, including an area that is gaining attention as a local wine destination, Baja California. Pleasant background music added to the festive atmosphere. It was kind of like being at a really good, classy holiday party.
For three hours, 100+ people slid from vendor to vendor, sampling whites, reds, roses and – showing off the latest alcohol trends – adult seltzers and canned cocktails. There were also vodka, whiskey and tequila samplings. What the people liked varied as much as the Padres lineup but variety is the spice of life as well as at this festival. At the Grand Decant, you got up close to the wineries and winemakers without feeling rushed to move onto the next stop.
My favorite taste was not a wine at all but the Old Fashioned from Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. By the way it’s my philosophy to sip the wines first – starting with the lighter whites and working my way up to the bold reds – and then finishing off with spirits. That provides a nice, smooth transition from one to the other while also keeping me refreshed enough to enjoy the samples.
San Diego Wine & Food Festival Grand Tasting
Ahh, the Grand Tasting. Has a wine and food festival ever had a more appropriate name? Not to my knowledge.
It sure is grand and in more ways than one. The wines are grand. The food is grand. The other samples – craft beer, spirits – are grand. The location is grand, on Embarcadero North Park with San Diego Bay one side and the Marriott Marina on the other. And the crowd is grand, both in size and in happy friendlies. In that San Diego way, you know.
For three hours – four for early entry and VIPs – you table hop eating food so good it stops you in your tracks and sampling whatever drink strikes your fancy at the moment.
My favorite food was Sam The Cooking Guy’s beef sandwich dipped in its own broth – it was off the hook!.This was closely followed by the tri tip at Brandt’s meats, which for the second year in a row had a large area along the marina that was a like a garden party. Frankly, it hard to decide which food was better but I gave the nod to Sam’s because of the dip in the broth.
My favorite drink – and certainly the most creative – was the slushy rose from North County winery (Encinitas, with a tasting room in Vista) Burtech Family Vineyard. Wow! I had met them at the previous night’s Grand Decant and plan to get up there for a tasting real soon.
The funniest vendor was Triton Charters ,which had little bathtub sailboats set up so you could race them. It also served a really good cocktail, which is featured on its charters. Time to book a charter!
There was no way for myself, PubClub.com photographer JC or anyone else there to get to every vendor. There was simply too much to sample. But, done right, we and others managed to savor every moment. And that included it’s best element of all: that’s the smiling and friendly people enjoying a sunny day by the water in an environment that’s just made for fun.
Heck based on this event alone they should rename it the San Diego Wine, Food and Fun Festival.
San Diego Wine & Food Festival Grand Fiesta
@pubclub.com Tacos, margaritas, craft beer on a #sundayfunday in #sandiego at the @sdbayfest! #pubclub #pubclubbing #tacos #margaretis ♬ How You Like That – BLACKPINK
The newly-revamped and expanded Grand Fiesta – formerly the Taco TKO – was THE ideal wrap-up event for the San Diego Wine & Food Festival.
Held in a Liberty Station park, it was bigger and better than the smaller events of the past. There were more vendors, more choices and you didn’t have to wait 10 minutes in lines whenever you wanted a taco. In most instances, I simply walked right up to a restaurant’s table and grabbed a delicious taco.
In fact, if the Grand Tasting is too much for you – it’s really kind of like speed dating the way you vendor hop through it – and prefer to move at a more moderate pace in a less crowded space – then I highly recommend the Grand Fiesta to you.
I can’t take anything away from any of the tacos I tried; they were all great. The restaurants were cooking the meats on grills and with a margarita sample or craft beer in hand, what’s not to like, right? Sam the Cooking Guy’s Not Not Tacos won the judge’s choice of Best Taco while the second-place choice, Coco Maya, won the people’s award.
There was even pizza from Dang Brothers Pizza, which was danged good; they cooked it in an oven in the back of a converted vintage fire truck. Is that cool or what!?
My favorite taco was from Karnes en su Jugo in Tijuana, which were served with a dipping sauce. Ymmmm! I was also blown away with the shrimp taco from Moonshine Flats, a country music bar in the Gaslamp Quarter; it’s only a few blocks from PubClub.com World Headquarters and I had no idea it had such great tacos.
There were several booths handing out margarita samples, made from both tequila and mezcal. The most creative was Juan De Leon, which had a stationary bike with a prize wheel. People would pedal the bike to choose the type of tequila to be used in their margarita. Then a blender was placed on the bike and people would pedal to blend the drink.
The second-most creative booth was 400 Conejos, which featured a cute girl in a booth with a deck of cards, almost like a fortune teller. You picked a card, she read the words on the back and then you went to the counter to get a very good flavored margarita.
There was also a booth with whiskey and one with vodka but I resisted the frequent temptations to go to the rum booths. It’s not like me to pass up really good rum drinks but this was a tacos complimented by margarita and beer samples day and I knew better than to mix my spirits.
I do have one suggestion for the organizers, one that was mentioned to me by a few people who saw the press credential hanging around my neck. And that is to provide some seating at future events. There really was none, except for the curbs and on the grass. Lounging on the grass on a beautiful, sunny day with food, drinks and live music is a pretty good way to spend a Sunday afternoon but it is a good idea to add a few chairs, which would also make it easier for eating the tacos.
Links:
• San Diego Wine & Food Festival Grand Tasting 2022 Photos & Videos (pubclub.com)
• San Diego Wine & Food Festival Grand Decant 2022 Photos & Videos (pubclub.com)
• Food, Wine and Culture – San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival
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