Tuna Toast

The Los Angeles Wine & Food Festival




Thanks to Foodie Universe, I had a chance to attend the Los Angeles Wine & Food Festival last weekend. I was so excited when I won the tickets and pretty much decided right away to take my dad, who is a food and wine lover himself. So on Saturday, August 26th, he and I got in the car, stomachs empty and ready to get our wine-drinkin' on!


After a stop in Koreatown where my Papa wanted to show me an awesome Korean market (can't remember the name but it's on Western...big, mall-type place w/ lots of Korean and Japanese foodstuff), we arrived at the LA Convention Center. After picking up our tickets, we walked into the hall and immediately saw a table full of stemless wine glasses, each emblazoned with the festival's logo. Each attendee was informed that you take one glass and keep it with you to taste all of the various wines offered. Great idea!

We started on one end and, from where we could see, couldn't really tell how many stalls there would be. At the beginning of the line, there were a few wine stalls and a couple of food ones. We sampled a bit of jumbo lump crab served in tiny martini glasses and tossed with cocktail sauce (yum!), then moved onto a cheese counter where I tried some chocolate goat cheese (so-so....I like my cheese salty, I think!) and a nugget of parmesan. It was hard to get much more because this was definitely the most popular stalls at the festival. We would soon find out why!


After we turned a corner, we tried some dark chocolate and a peanut butter truffle.....mmmmm. Of course in the meantime we sipped on various wines, sparkling wines and liquors. We were about 30 minutes in and having a grand ol time. I just wished I would have paced myself................because after those peanut butter truffles, the "food" part of the LA Wine & Food was done. We walked with our glasses to stall after stall of Central Coast pinot noirs, gleefully sipped on three different types of ruby port, was ecstatic to see the Korean raspberry wine that I had seen at the supermarket hours before and tried a bit of the Korean pomegranate wine that looked too pretty to pass up. Mind you- it isn't like we drank more than a sip or two of each thing, but for anyone whose ever been wine tasting, you know how quickly those sips add up to glasses.




Even though I started feeling a bit woozy, I couldn't possibly pass up the chance to try some Chai liquor, now could I? What's that over there.....some sparkling red wine? Gimme! How about some fig vodka and some toffee liquor? Oh yes, let me just rinse out my glass before you pour me some. Thank goodness we ran into some nuts. Wait- I will clarify:



Now I'm not saying that 4 pistachios in a tiny box were going to sober me up, but they sure did taste great. Luckily we ran into some very nice girls who were so hungry that they had bought a hunk of cheese off of the one cheese company. They prepared a nice little plate of appetizers for us:




After we snacked, we hit a couple more wine stalls and then decided to call it a day. We got plenty of wine glasses, samples of various liquors and more pamphlets than you could shake a stick at. It was a "lovely way to spend a day," as my Papa said. I totally agree. Although I must ask the organizers of the LA Wine & Food Festival- next year, could you include more food? Because I think it's more like the LA Wine and Liquor and Spirits Festival. And I don't know if you want a convention center full of drunk, hungry foodies. It could be dangerous!

Thanks again to Foodie Universe for the tickets- it was an amazing experience!!! You really made our weekend.