Wouldn't you like to relax on the beach at sunset, have a drink and then eat some great food like the people in the photo above are planning to do?
Perhaps you can, at next year's Food & Wine Festival in Ixtapa Zihuatanejo. That's presuming there will be another, because the first two, including the one last week, were so successful.
Rick Bayless was last year's headliner. This year's festival, sponsored again by Food & Wine magazine, brought together seven chefs from Mexico, two from the United States, Mexico's star chocolatier, Baja winemakers and tequila and mezcal producers.
The festival started with demos by Patricia Quintana of Izote in Mexico City (above) and Guillermo González Beristain of the Pangea restaurant group in Monterrey, Nuevo León. They appeared at the same time, so if you wanted to see both, you were out of luck.
Federico López of Cancún, founder of the Ambrosia cooking school and named one of Mexico's top 10 chefs, collaborated on the final dinner, at Hotel Las Brisas Ixtapa. The first course (above) was spiny lobster with corn pudding, sweet potato, and a cumin and lime vinaigrette.
Also taking part were Daniel Ovadía of Paxia San Angel and Paxia Santa Fe in Mexico City, and Benito Molina and his wife Solange from Manzanillo in Ensenada. One of Ovadía's dishes was fish cooked in clay and served with a cold bean salad (above).
The Molinas gave their demo in Ixtapa on Saturday, when the area was closed down for a triathlon, making it difficult or, actually, impossible to get there.
One of the big draws was celebrity chef Alfredo Oropeza of Mexico City (above), who has the TV show "Al Sabor del Chef," his own magazine, "Oropeza," and several cookbooks.
He's so well known that women cried at the thrill of seeing him, or so observers told me.
The chocolatier, who works only with cacao grown in Mexico, was José Ramón Castillo of Que Bo! Chocolatería in Mexico City (above). At his demo, he swept a flood of chocolate back and forth on an immense granite slab to temper it.
The American chefs were Michael Symon, owner of Lola and other restaurants in Cleveland and Detroit, and Marcus Samuelsson (right) of Red Rooster in Harlem. Samuelsson dressed for the balmy tropical weather that was as important a festival attraction as the wine and food. They were joined by wine and spirits specialist Mark Oldman.
The chef demos and tastings took place at top hotels, on Playa La Ropa in Zihuatanejo, on the Palma Real Golf Course in Ixtapa (above) and at the Marina Ixtapa, where signs warn that crocodiles infest the waters. None of those showed up for the tasting, although there were plenty of savory bites, human and otherwise.
Festival food ranged from very traditional, prepared by local women like the one in the photo above, to chef twists that put Mexican ingredients into places they've never been.
A series on the 12 top tastes (maybe more) is coming up, followed by posts on recipes and places where you may want to eat if you go next year.
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