The Rich, Duped, Missed the Good Parties

Some friends came for a weekend visit to Cindy’s and they brought Friday’s Wall Street Journal. This fat paper is always full of good stuff, it’s hard to get through the whole thing. I found a funny item about the proliferation of food festivals, and how the rich are missing out and still paying big bucks.

“But the oenophiles who paid $5,000 last month to drink rare wines and mingle with the likes of NY chef Daniel Boulud and Hawaiian-fusion pioneer Roy Yamaguchi were in for a surprise. While Mr. Boulud stayed at the dinner, Mr Yamaguchi and most of the other chefs spent the night at private afterhours parties with sommeliers and winemakers, where whole pigs were roasted on spits, oysters were slurped until dawn, and bottles opened that the patrons never saw.

Last month’s South Beach festival in Miami was basically a two-party system. The top billed public event was a $600-a-head, seven course tribute dinner honoring iconoclastic Spanish chef Ferran Adria. There, Mr. Adria didn’t cook or contribute to the menu, some courses took nearly an hour to arrive, and the wine, provided by a local distributor, didn’t always pass muster. A few nights earlier, however, there was a smaller private fete for Mr. Adria. This cost five times as much as the public tribute.”