SDUT Pacific Online Logo
Advertisement
Advertisement
Eat | Drink

¡Latin Food Fest! spicing up the San Diego waterfront this weekend

By Michele Parente
San Diego Union-Tribune
Share

San Diego, are you ready for another heat wave?

The annual ¡Latin Food Fest! is spicing up the Embarcadero this weekend with some of the hottest celebrity chefs, food, wine, beer and spirits for what’s billed as a “Hispanic culinary extravaganza.”

Headlining the two-day event Friday night and Saturday afternoon are star Peruvian chef Ricardo Zarate and chef and multimedia personality Tati Polo, who’ll both be doing cooking demonstrations.

Wines of Garnacha — known outside the Spanish-speaking world as grenache — will also hold a wine workshop on the demo stage from 12:45 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday. (Don’t worry, you’ll be able to taste variations of grenache/garnacha — whites, reds and rosés — at the Wines of Garnacha booth at Saturday’s Gran Tasting.)

Wines from Argentina, Chile, Napa, Portugal and Spain will be all be poured but this being San Diego, wine won’t be the only beverage available. In addition to a michelada contest, other beers to be served include the local cross-border cervecería SouthNorte Beer Co., Tony Cerveza (from Nicaragua), Estrella Damm (from Spain) and Bohemia (from Mexico).

And this being a festival celebrating all things Latin, the range of spirits spans the globe: tequila, mezcal, raicilla and other agave spirits from Mexico, Mexican sotol and pulque, cacchaça from Brazil, pisco from Chile and Peru, various rums and even Italian Fernet.

A small sampling of the dozens of dishes chefs will be serving includes shucked Baja oysters by Jose Munoz of Ironside Fish & Oyster, barbacoa tacos by Aqui es Texcoco, jalapeño cheese and sweet corn tamales by The Vegan Tamale Company, and chili guaro Costa Rican ceviche by Hugo Miranda.

¡Latin Food Fest!

When: 7:30 p.m. (6:30 p.m. for VIPs) Friday and noon (11 a.m. for VIPs) Saturday

Where: Embarcadero Marina Park North, 400 Kettner Blvd., downtown San Diego

Tickets: $25-$149

Online: latinfoodfest.com/events-san-diego

michele.parente@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @sdeditgirl

Eat | Drink
Michele Parente

Michele Parente is the Dining, Wine + Lifestyle reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Her areas of expertise include the Valle de Guadalupe wine region, fashion, television, women’s issues and coverage of aging, such as the impact of Alzheimer’s and dementia and family caregiving. Michele is the former Sunday and features editor, where she oversaw profiles, special projects, such as the Legacy of WWII and in-depth reports on a variety of topics. She joined the U-T in 2003, supervising coverage areas that have included features, fashion, TV, Food, Consumer Health and Arts & Entertainment. Previously, Michele was the assistant features editor at The Oregonian, in Portland, as well as the Portland City Hall reporter. She spent 10 years at New York Newsday as a reporter on the crime, education, state legislature and New York City Hall beats. She was part of a team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting. A native New Yorker, Michele received her B.A. in political science and Italian Literature at UC Berkeley. In 1980, she studied at L’Università di Urbino, in Italy. One of her life’s goals is to make her way through each of the world’s great wine regions.

Advertisement