NYCWFF '13 Jets + Chefs Tailgate

THE CITY’S MOST WIDE-RANGING AND PRESTIGIOUS FOOD FESTIVAL HAS AS ITS SWEEPING GOAL NOTHING LESS THAN ENDING FOOD POVERTY THROUGHOUT THE FIVE BOROUGHS…AND BEYOND

Six years after Lee Brian Schrager, vice president of corporate communications and national events at Southern wine and spirits of America, launched a fledgling food festival in Brooklyn cosponsored by the nation’s largest television resource devoted to all matters culinary, the Food Network New York City Wine and Food Festival has hit its stride as the city’s most prestigious association of dining execs, winemakers and spirit producers, visionary chefs, restaurant owners, and lovers of fine flavor. The event, which runs from October 16 to the 19th, is a positively dizzying collection of more than 100 seminars, product rollouts, promotional events, and celebrity meet-and-greets, with all proceeds devoted to benefit the hunger relief programs Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign and Food Bank For New York City. To date, the festival has raised better than $7 million to aid the hungry, and this year event organizers expect a record-breaking donation.

A very, very select list of the events Includes Frenchie: new Bistro Cooking hosted by Gregory Marchand (October 16, from seven to 10 p.m., $250), in which acclaimed chef Marchand’s 24-seat bistro in Paris provides the spiritual setting for a demonstrated multi-course menu at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, just a few blocks from Central Park. Another Manhattan standout will be a bit of late night fun at the Harvard Club on October 17 (11 p.m.to 2 a.m., $175) in rock& roll night market, where Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto will host one of the most innovative and delicious karaoke parties in the city. A selection of chefs will craft their own interpretations of dumplings, sushi, dim sum, and eggrolls, while guests dance and snack. An additional beneficiary that evening will be Hot Bread Kitchen, a business incubator that supports cooks and bakers from immigrant communities.

Jets + Chefs: the ultimate tailgatecombines hosts NFL legend and Hall of Famer Joe Namath with superstar chef Mario Batali (Esurance Rooftop at Pier 92, October 18, 12 p.m.to 3 p.m., $150, $50 for those under 21), who will present a collection of the city’s premier chefs and their fascinating riffs on tailgater classics like chicken wings, spareribs, and steaks, in conjunction (of course) with beer, wine, and spirits. Children at the event can participate in a number of games in the Fan Zone and take pictures with the New York Jets Flight Crew.

Brooklyn residents will be relieved to know that events don’t skip over our fair borough, as Saturday, October 18 (North Cabana at The Maritime Hotel, 88 Ninth Avenue 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., $125) brings Ample Hills & Brooklyn’s Best dessert Party, a late-night ice cream social that features Ample Hills Creamery (see profile this issue) and One Girl Cookies, Liddabit Sweets, Ovenly and Four & Twenty Blackbirds for a sweet, sweeping survey of the best desserts the area has to offer.Tickets can be purchased at the door for all events not previously sold out, and price covers all food and beverage consumed at each event, and all going must be 21 or older, unless otherwise indicated on event descriptions.

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