NYC Food and Wine Festival Moves to Brooklyn — But “It’s Not a Manhattan FU”

The New York City Wine and Food Festival will forsake Manhattan for the first time in 17 years and bring its showcase events to the Brooklyn waterfront — bolstering the borough’s growing epicurean cred.

The annual event, which starts from October. 17-20, will erect a giant tent at Sunset Park’s Invesco QQQ Brooklyn Army Terminal Campus, a 450,000-square-foot outdoor space that will host some of the world’s best chefs under one roof of temporary.

“This is not a Manhattan FU,” festival founder and director Lee Brian Schrager told Side Dish.

“We wanted to make it safer in case of rain and in one area to make it easier for everyone.

In previous years, the event was held on Manhattan’s piers, which could not be tented and festival-goers risked drowning as they moved between venues.

Now, ferries will ferry food from Wall Street to the Brooklyn Pier near 59th Street for the culinary spectacle, which drew 43,000 people last year.

Restaurateur Matthew Glazier, owner of Tiny’s Cantina — a popular spot for celebrities and star athletes near the Barclays Center — is looking forward to taking part on his home turf.

“Brooklyn’s food scene is as diverse as its residents, making it a premier culinary destination,” Glazier told Side Dish. “Post-COVID, Brooklyn’s Resilience Has Outstripped Manhattan”.

When the NYCWFF began 17 years ago, its popular Burger Bash event was held in Brooklyn, in a tobacco warehouse in Dumbo. So, in a sense, it’s going back to its roots.

“People said we were crazy and couldn’t do it there, but we were well received and we saw Brooklyn grow into one of the hottest restaurant spaces in the country,” Schrager said.

The festival will not completely abandon Manhattan. It will host intimate breakfasts and dinners and ‘medium-sized’ events for 600 to 1,000 people, Schrager added.

Many will take place at One World Trade and the nearby Hall des Lumieres New York.

The festival starts in October. 17 with Brooklyn Eats & Beats, featuring top Brooklyn chefs Esther Choi, Billy Durney, Sean Feeney, Mark Iacono, Michael Solomonov and 25 of Brooklyn’s iconic restaurants. Additional Brooklyn events will include Oyster Bash with Andrew Zimmern at Fornino Brooklyn Bridge Park and Cafe Spaghetti x Casa Mono.

Chef Bobby Flay will return to the festival for the first time in seven years. Other top chefs at the festival, which supports charity partner God’s Love We Deliver, include Gabriele Bertaccini, Alex Guarnaschelli, Vikas Khanna, Duff Goldman and Geoffrey Zakarian.

Anticipated events include Ciao House: An Italian Taste hosted by Gabriele Bertaccini and Alex Guarnaschelli inside the Hall des Lumières in Lower Manhattan, a Drag Disco hosted by David Burtka and Neil Patrick Harris at The Cutting Room, the Mediterranean mezze breakfast of presented by Genova Premium Tuna hosted by Michael Symon at Hall des Lumières, A Caviar & Cocktail Affair hosted by Scott Conant and Antonia Lofaso at ASPIRE at One World Observatory and a Sunday Lunch at Le Coucou hosted by Daniel Rose , Melissa Ben-Ishay and Maddy DeVita.

The festival also features 30 one-night-only Intimate Dinners as part of the Bank of America Dinner Series, paired with premium wines and spirits from the festival’s exclusive purveyor, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits. Dinners will be curated by culinary stars including Daniel Boulud, Marcus Samuelsson, Amanda Freitag, Ayesha Nurdjaja and Martha Stewart.

This year’s NYCWFF will also welcome more celebrities than ever — especially those who enjoy their popular lines of spirits. Celebrities promoting their brands will include rappers Snoop Doog, Dre and 50 Cent, as well as Hollywood A-lister Blake Lively

Lively, founder of Betty Booze, will host The Betty BOOze Harvest Happy Hour at The Lawn Club at The Seaport.

“It’s just another natural step. Chefs got into pots and pans and now celebrities are getting into beverage brands,” Shrager said.