Foodie News
With its first Texas festival, Food & Wine snubs Houston for Austin
Food & Wine magazine is finally bringing one of its prestigious foodie festivals to Texas, and they're setting up in Austin.
The first Austin Food & Wine Festival is scheduled for March 30-April 1. Tyson Cole announced the festival to Eater Austin. The festival is being produced by C3, which also put on the Austin City Limits Festival and Lollapalooza, with Cole, La Condesa restaurateur Jesse Herman, and Fort Worth's Tim Love as partners.
The Austin Food & Wine Festival is taking the place of the 26-year-old Hill Country Wine & Food Festival, and having an experienced big-event producer, a committed and well-known team of chefs and a history of food tourism are three excellent reasons to focus on Austin.
Not surprisingly there is a bit of foodie jealousy in the big cities, having this idea that Austin gets all the cool stuff (we do), and gets it annually. Now we have music covered with South by Southwest and Austin City Limits, and we add a big national food and wine event. Eat it and weep Houston.
Houston can still brag, a quick glance at the Food & Wine guide to both cities shows more love for Houston (with 56 restaurants recommended) than Austin (with only 37).
I'm not trying to diss Houston's food scene — the city has some truly great restaurants. But can it really compete with Austin?