The events begin Friday with an all day Mango Culinary Conference.  James Beard award-winning cookbook author, TV personality, and actress Madhur Jaffrey and Miami’s Top Chef contestant Andrea Curto-Randazzo will demonstrate “East vs West: Differences in Mango Cuisine.”  Chefs Allen Susser and Norman Van Aken will also participate. Tickets for the culinary conference are $60.

The festival is on Saturday and Sunday.  As usual, there will be a tasting of mangos from around the world, as well as an auction of international mangos. This year, the auction will be accompanied by a Bollywood dance performance.

Mango medics will be on hand to diagnose your ailing plant.  Just bring them a sample in a sealed plastic bag.  There will be culinary demonstrations from chefs all weekend, including Chef John Critchley of Area 31, Aria Kagan of the Food Network, and Gonzalo Rivera of La Marea.

Mangos at last year’s international display.

On Sunday, Madhur Jaffrey will give a mango chutney demonstration and preside over the Chutney Challenge.  There will also be ongoing mango lectures, an international mango market, musical entertainment, and children’s activities. Click here for the festival schedule.

The Mango Brunch on Sunday pairs mangos from Fairchild’s Williams Grove collection with local chefs Sean Bernal, Crystal Cullison (AltaMare), Mark Militello (Trina), Gonzalo Rivera (La Marea) Kris Wessel (Red Light), Bombay Darbar Restaurant, and that champion of mangos, Allen Susser (Chef Allen’s). Tickets are still available at $100 each or $75 each for Fairchild members.

Click here to read an interview with Tropical Fruit Curator, Dr. Richard Campbell, about growing mangos in South Florida and about Fairchild’s plans to provide “boutique mangos.”

Mango Culinary Conference

When: Friday, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm

Where: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden 10901 Old Cutler Road, Miami

How much: $60, register for the conference with Annie Stamps at 305.667.1651 ext. 3377

International Mango Festival

When: Saturday and Sunday, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm

Where: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden 10901 Old Cutler Road, Miami

How much: Non-members: $20 for adults, $15 for seniors 65 and up, and $10 for children 6-17. If you ride your bike to the Festival and use the bike valet, admission is $15 for adults and $8 for children. Free to Fairchild members and children 5 and under

Mango Brunch

When: Sunday, 11 am

Where: Garden House at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden 10901 Old Cutler Road, Miami

How much: $100 for non-members, $75 for members, prepaid.  Click here for more info and to buy tickets.

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Dr. Richard Campbell loves his job. This is a man passionate about mangos, as evidenced by his recent cover photo for Edible South Florida magazine.  Campbell is one of the Tropical Fruit Curators at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. That means that, among other things, Campbell is responsible for helping prepare for the International Mango Festival, and for helping supply the mangos displayed and sampled at the annual tastings during the festival.

For the first time grower, Campbell suggests planting varieties like  Cogshall,  Angie, and Jean Ellen.  These are good starter mangoes that will grow successfully in Florida, but he also says that it depends on your taste. “That’s the great thing about mangos–you can get any flavor you can think of.”

Here’s more from Campbell:

Is this a good time to plant mangos?

Yes.   In July, we normally have a mini dry season, but it’s normally not very long.  It’s a very good time to plant mangos in the middle of summer.  June is normally the best month, but August is also a very good month.

I was at Whole Foods and a woman was asking about local mangos, because all they had was mangos from Mexico. Why we don’t see more of these local mangos in our local supermarkets?

It’s a product of a modern cold chain in the United State supermarket system and you know, we can either condemn it or whatever but the bottom line is that it’s very hard to meet their standards for what they consider a mango,which is something that can stay in refrigeration and travel a long distance.  There’s a zero tolerance for any blemish.

Now at Fairchild, at our farm, we’re growing mangos as a boutique product.  We have a five-acre property [Williams Grove] where we grow all these different varieties,  and we’re learning a lot about how to do it.  One of the things we’ve been doing is kind of dancing around with Whole Foods about supplying their mangos to them, but frankly the restrictions they would put on me  wouldn’t really work for us.  We just do better supplying them to the public.

Restrictions?

It’s logistics.  As you know, we have a small staff.  We’re a botanical garden–that’s our first job.

We do a very good job now of supplying very good quality mangos to the public [at Williams Grove] and we’re learning how to do it well.  As of now, we don’t have enough of a volume of any specific variety.  One day we hope to  be able to get to that level where we work with Whole Foods.

Whole Foods is very open to the whole idea.  They are very good in general about trying to meet that need and one day I’m sure we’ll get there.  It’s just as much our inadequacy as much as theirs to meet that goal.

The other issue for local mangos is very few people have any of these new varieties.  Most people have the old varieties from when South Florida had a general mango business–the same things that are being imported into the U.S. now were being grown here. And we have a general price disadvantage.  People can get better prices out of Mexico than they can out of South Florida.

The good thing is for the first time in a couple of years, we have seen pricing for local mangoes that makes it a good business again, which is exciting for the local consumer, because as long as the farmer can stay in business, he’ll grow it.

That’s another thing for people to understand: farming is a way of life, but it’s also a business to people. Everybody has to stay in business in order to do it.  Sometimes that’s not so easy.

Are there very many mango growers in South Florida?

There’s a lot of them.

At Williams Grove, we’ve been trying to learn by experience because there are varieties of mangos you can and can’t grow.  You can do research,  but when you grow them week in, week out, put them in a cooler, [that's the real way to learn which ones work.]   For example, you have to make real soft mangos into smoothies.   So there are certain mangos that are more useful than others.  But yeah, there’s a lot of interest from growers .  We’re talking about small acreages. We’re not talking about  a hundred acre planting.  There’s a lot of five, ten acre growers. There’s a real future and that’s exciting.

Do all of the mango dishes at the Mango Brunch come from Williams Grove?

The chefs have been coming in all afternoon and getting mangos from us.  That’s also the fun part.  They come in and get very excited about all of the varieties.  I try to give them a good group that they can not only use for their dishes, but they can also sample and get excited about.

What I would love to do is to start to supply the chefs with mangoes throughout the year and again that’s just a logistical issue.  But you know, it’s nice to know there is a demand there, it’s nice to know we have the quality.  So we’re working on creating a supply situation for culinary trade in specialty mangoes sometime in the future.

Tell me a little but about the mango tasting this year.

One of the biggest challenges of the mango tasting is to get the proper maturity on the mangos.  I take a risk on some varieties that we have never done before. It’s fun to take risks, but it kind of freaks me out because I’m a perfectionist.  Another thing that holds us back is you’ve got to have enough mangos for a thousand people.  But I think we’ve got it.

We’re going to have Alphonse and Mallika at the tasting.  Alphonse and Mallika are, of course, top grade  Indian mangos.

They just started letting the Alphonse and other Indian mangos come in to the US a few years ago,  right?

Right.  We work very closely with one of the guys who organized that whole thing, Bhaskar Savani–he got the introduction of those mangos into the U.S.  He’ll be at the festival this weekend. And Bhaskar sends boxes of mangos to us [from India.]  I’m particularly gunning to blow him away this weekend with the exceptional quality in our Alphonses and Mallikas.

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You’ll see locals like Teena Borek (of Teena’s Pride Farm), Melissa Contreras (founder of Urban Oasis Project), and the Booker T. Washington students behind The Overtown Cookbook.

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Chef-owner Michael Schwartz of Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink took home a James Beard Award last night.  He was named Best Chef: South.   Other nominees included Zach Bell of Cafe Boulud in Palm Beach, Scott Boswell of Stella! in New Orleans, John Harris of Lilette in New Orleans, and Christopher Hastings of Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham.  Here is the full list of 2010 winners.

Barry Estabrook won a James Beard Award  for his 2009 Gourmet article, “Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes.”  Estabrook wrote a revealing article about tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida.

Since Gourmet is no more (although there are rumors of a rebirth), you can now read Estabrook’s writing at The Atlantic. He continues his work on labor abuses in the field, including this article about oranges and modern slavery.

Mark Bittman started his new “slog” (salon/blog) on Monday.  Here’s his opening salvo.  He’ll be joined at his “community table” by Barry Estabrook, Civil Eats editor Paula Crossfield, “outlaw cook” John Thorne,  Raj Patel, and others.

An interesting trend: chefs foregoing meat.  Sunday, Jose Andres declared on 60 Minutes that meat is boring, compared to the wonders of a fruit such as a pineapple.  Even more amazing:  Mario Batali instituted Meatless Mondays at all of his restaurants.

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Fleming is tucked on the side of a strip mall on 136th Avenue, close to the Falls.  It’s popular with Pinecrest locals.   Have you heard of it?  Exactly.

Fleming hopes to increase its visibility with a turn on Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.  The surly chef and his staff prescribed changes to the menu and to the interior, both of which got a facelift after the chef’s visit.  The show airs this Friday night (5/7) at 9 p.m. on Fox.

“Each week, Chef Ramsay will attempt to turn one ordinary and empty restaurant into the most popular, sought-after venue in town. He reveals the behind-the-scenes realities of running a restaurant and wastes no time getting down to business – implementing signature menu items, updating dated décor and making the restaurant run as smooth as possible.” [Fox: Kitchen Nightmares]

Although the restaurant kept some of its signature Danish or classic French items on the menu, they changed others, following the subtle recommendations of Chef Ramsay.

Gingered ahi tuna is a new menu item at Fleming.

General Manager Andrew Hall invites diners to compare some Fleming original recipes with some of Ramsay’s this Friday night.  Fleming will serve wine and appetizers from 6:30 to 7:15, followed by a limited dinner menu, dessert, coffee or tea, and then the show at 9 pm.

Some of the items on the premiere night menu are Fleming’s duck danoise (served with baked apple and prunes, red cabbage, and roasted potatoes), Cuban coffee rubbed rib eye steak (served with cauliflower gratin and potatoes), and snapper francais (served with lemon butter sauce, capers, and linguine).  The cost for the night is 35$, not including tax and gratuity.  Diners must reserve in advance.  “It is sure to be a fun night and probably a bit embarrassing for us,” says Hall.

When: Friday, May 7, 2010.  Appetizers and wine from 6:30 pm to 7:15 pm, followed by dinner.  Contact Fleming for seating times.   Show airs at 9 pm.

Where: Fleming, 8511 SW 136 Street, Miami  (305) 232 6444

How much: $35, including wine, appetizers, soup, salad, entree (from premiere night menu), coffee or tea.  Tax and gratuity are not included.  Diners must reserve in advance.

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I suppose you can file this one under “better late than never.” Here is a photo post of the Midnight Amore pasta orgy that took place at Scarpetta from 11 pm to 1 am on Saturday night of the South Beach Wine and Food Festival.  Chefs Scott Conant (Scarpetta), Alex Guarnaschelli (Food Network/Butter), and Rocco DiSpirito headlined the event.

Carbs, glorious carbs. With the such an abundance of pasta available, I did not waste much room on bread. /David Samayoa

I arrived early, which was a mistake, since the cooking stations were packed.  My husband and I  waited twenty minutes to get our first serving after navigating our way through the crowds to find a manageable queue.  I was already indignant: “Imagine if we’d paid for these tickets. It’s crazy to think you would pay $125 and wait this long for the food.”  Then it dawned on me:  An 11 pm dinner at the Fontainebleau is for scenesters, and you’re paying just as much for the milieu and the ubiquitous pumping   electro beats of South Beach, as you are for the food.

The view from the connecting hallway of the Fontainebleau/ David Samayoa

A scene it was.  In addition to Conant, Guarnaschelli, and a gracious (and quite tall) DiSpirito, I spied Dilido Chef and former Top Chef contestant Jeff McInnis, Food TV’s Dinner: Impossible host Robert Irvine , and Guy Fieri-doppelganger Anne Burrell.  I thought I spotted Zooey Deschanel, but perhaps it was another doppelganger.

Pappardelle with shrimp and rabbit with cavatelli/ David Samayoa

On one visit to the bathroom, I heard increasingly uproarious laughter from outside the stalls and found Chef Guarnaschelli regaling a half dozen or more women with some funny stories, including one about falling flat on her boobs in front of everyone at her restaurant.  At first, I thought the women were all friends until I recognized the chef.  Maybe they were all friends.  She definitely had the delivery down.

We finally get to the front of the line for Rocco DiSpirito’s shrimp orecchiette. / David Samayoa

The toothsome shrimp orecchiette /David Samayoa

After I finally got my first serving of food, I was instantly placated by DiSpirito’s delectable and perfectly al dente shrimp orecchiette.  I found a recipe for Rocco’s Shrimp Orecchiette on Cookstr.  I’m not certain if this is the exact recipe for the dish served, but it’s quite good.

It turned out that others knew better than I.   After we consumed our first dish, the lines thinned out considerably, with almost no waiting time closer to midnight.  What initially seemed like  slim pickings turned out to be an embarrassment of pasta, and I did eat my fill. The unctuous rabbit cavatelli and the famous Scarpetta tomato-basil spaghetti were also compelling. (Serious Eats has a photo tutorial of how to make the signature spaghetti here.)  I was sorry to  leave so many toothsome dishes untouched, but after a while, I couldn’t handle the abundant supply.

A coveted cream puff sits behind a less memorable dessert. /David Samayoa

I tried one, two, three, and then four addictive cream puffs from the dessert table.  Rich chocolate truffles, mini carrot cakes, and dulce de leche confections disappeared into the mouths of a hovering crowd as quickly as they were replenished, but the cream puffs were the stuff of memories.

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* * * Photo by Chuck Ferrin. * * *

(Continued from Part 1)

Americans, and a great deal of the people on Planet Earth, are interested in wine.  The total estimated retail wine sales for 2010 are $117 billion dollars.   Most of this money isn’t going to come from the wallet-busting, high-profile bottles on a Top 10 List.  It’s going to come from wine that proves itself through quality and value, and the folks who are going to spend that $117 billion are mostly new wine drinkers and people recently inclined to try new types of wine.

And to be honest, I’m one of those people, even though I work in the wine business.  I joined a wine tasting club when I got out of college and went to monthly tastings for years. I learned that I liked Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc, and that’s about all I can tell you from that experience. I drank it many times over, and I still do on occasion.  It was only two years ago that I really started hitting the books hard to learn about wine, and it took me months of tasting to figure out if I even liked red wine.  But I did it, and now I can see the upside to just about any wine, so long as it represents an honest piece of craftsmanship.

So for me, what was the best wine at “The Pulse of the Wine World” tasting?  Pound for pound, I liked the Domaine Wachau Smaragd Terrassen Grüner Veltliner.  I thought it had the most complexity, especially in the nose that promised tropical fruit, peaches, and minerals.  But this wine costs more than $20, probably in the $22 to $30 range, so it should be good.  This is an expensive white wine, but I have to say that it’s worth its salt.

In that $15 push category, I enjoyed the Juve Y Camps Brut Rosé Cava. The fruit was ripe and lush, like a platter of fresh strawberries and black cherries.  Many of the rosés from Champagne are more delicate and reminiscent of softer fruits like raspberries, so this made for a nice change of pace.  There was also just the slightest hint of earthiness to add a little depth and structure.

The real winner in the all-important under $10 category was the Trapiche Torrontés. Torrontés is an aromatic grape in the Malvasia family that is widely grown in Argentina and Uruguay.  It hasn’t yet reached that massive level of popularity that drives prices ever skyward, so you should be able to find this bottle for as little as $5.99.  This is classic Torrontés–a big bouquet of exotic fruits, perfumed even, with a pleasing, eccentric palate.  Best of all, the white zinfandel drinkers seemed to really take to this one.  Torrontés–perhaps paving the way past the pink and sweet.

Aside from the wine tasting, here are some of Gary Vaynerchuk’s finer points:

-          Inexpensive wines benefit from decanting just as much as expensive wines, even more so. You can even take the cork out of the bottle and let it sit for a few hours if you don’t have a decanter.  The small surface area of the open bottle will slowly expose the wine to oxygen.  The wine gets better this way, and the aroma, in particular, benefits from a little air.

-          The shape of the wine glass does influence the taste of the wine, but only slightly. The aroma is affected more than anything, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have the “right” glass.

-          The same wine can taste better on vacation than when you’re not. Your environment does influence your perception of wine.  This is where he dropped his Jets reference.

-          Commit yourself to trying new wines as much as possible, because trying new things is the only way to learn. That can get expensive, so try and split the bill by forming a wine tasting club with a couple of friends, even if you only meet once a month.

-          Some of the most popular wines in the world–Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay, Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio, and Yellow Tail Shiraz in particular– also have the highest sugar levels of any wines in their respective categories. My personal favorite, Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc, is another example.  In spite of the perception that “dry” wine is the be-all-end-all type of wine, sugar still sells.

I agree with all of these points, even if I’m a Nobilo-drinking, staunch Riedel devotee who sometimes forgets to decant my $9 bottle of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon.  But more than anything, Gary’s personality got me thinking about what wine really is. Here’s a guy in jeans giving you straight talk like a blue collar Tri-State area man should, and yet he’s one of the preeminent wine voices in the world. How did that happen?  How did the wine world rife with staunch traditionalists let him crash the party?

In some ways, wine is the same as literature (here’s my own personal interjection–I can’t resist a lit reference anymore than Gary can resist the Jets).  When Roland Barthes wrote “The Death of the Author” for the Aspen Journal in 1967, he was on to something.  Once a person commits a piece of writing to the public domain, it’s up to the public to decide how they feel about it.  Michael Crichton doesn’t get to decide if Rising Sun reads like an extended exercise in Japan-bashing, and Alice Walker doesn’t get to decide if people really find The Color Purple entertaining.  Nor do they get to directly tell people how to interpret their works on any level.

The same is true for wine.  All of the people involved in the production of wine don’t have much of a say in the evaluation of the final product.  Christian Moueix doesn’t get to tell you if Pétrus is truly the world’s greatest red wine, and Jess Jackson doesn’t get to tell you if his Chardonnay tastes sweet or dry.  In the end, it’s up to the drinkers to row the oars, and critical voices, like Gary Vaynerchuk, are ultimately a small part of a cultural experience spanning thousands of years and billions of lives.  From this perspective, the scope of wine can be humbling. Wine critics can be tempted to take the fight-fire-with-fire approach, making their opinions seem as grand as wine itself. Gary often goes the other way, making himself and the entire industry appear funny and even ridiculous at times.  That’s why the blue jeans and all the video blogs work.  The only thing that’s missing from wine is more people like him.

Sometimes wine tastes better when the Jets win, and sometimes the Jets taste better when the wine wins.  Allow me to explain–Gary likes his wine more when the Jets win, because he’s happy.  Miami Dolphins fans in Gary’s wine classes like the Jets more because they’re happy.  This is a beautiful moment of relativity that demonstrates the plasticity and subsequent absurdity of opinion.   There is no fundamental truth to wine, just as there is no fundamental truth to sports allegiances. The Jets aren’t any better than the Dolphins, just as Cabernet Sauvignon isn’t any better than Riesling.  There’s no Neo-Platonic essence to any of it.  It’s just a bunch of opinions, and all of those opinions are likely absurd in the appropriate context.  They’re funny even, and that’s a great way to tackle wine.

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* * *Photo: Gary Vaynerchuk/ Courtesy of South Beach Wine and Food Festival* * *

I got the chance to see the-man-the-myth wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk at the 2010 South Beach Wine and Food Festival.  He hosted a seminar called “Pulse of the Wine World,” and I have to say that the man came through like gangbusters.

It’s safe to say now that Gary Vaynerchuk is certifiably famous.  He’s reached critical mass. If you saw him on the street, you might recognize him.  In fact, you might be one of the people mobbing him for a picture or an autograph.  Why will you be tackling this man?  Because he’s a wine guy, one of the first and most foremost internet wine guys, and these days, wine is big and the internet is everything.  Take note Wine Spectator-cyberwine is the future, and the future started ten years ago.  Remember the year 2000?

Gary Vaynerchuk is the Co-Owner and Director of Operations for the Wine Library shop in Springfield, New Jersey.  He also hosts the Wine Library TV videos.  You can watch him on-line, free of charge.  He swirls the wine in his glass like a tornado, sniffs it hard, and tells you what he thinks.  People like his commando approach to wine criticism–he’s a new voice in a field often crowded with upturned noses.  More importantly, Trina and I like him, and we’re internet people just the same.  But he’s also famous for something else–he’s a huge Jets fan, and that’s a tough road to hoe in Miami.

I can speak from personal experience.  After the Jets beat the Chargers in the playoffs this year, I proudly wore my #28 Curtis Martin jersey out on the town.  The Jets weren’t supposed to win, but they pulled off an upset in stunning fashion.  The “Sports Guy” Bill Simmons, another internet hero of mine, repeatedly proclaimed there was no chance that the Jets rookie quarterback, Mark Sanchez, could beat the Bengals let alone the Chargers, on the road no less.

But then he did.  Sports are great in the way that they just refuse to be predictable.  I felt confident in my white and green–everybody loves the underdog, right?  Not necessarily.  On the mean streets of West Dixie Highway and Biscayne Boulevard, my Jets jersey was showered with a chorus of boos, hisses, and frowns of disapproval as dark as a recently constructed South Florida condo. I realized then that Miami will always belong to the Dolphins, and the Jets will always be their mortal enemy.

I tried to explain that Curtis Martin was from my neighborhood in Pittsburgh–Squirrel Hill–and that he’s a local legend.  Everyone has a Curtis Martin jersey in the 15217 zip code, even in the heart of Steelers country.  Some people gave me a pardon, but I didn’t dare say that I actually liked the Jets.  But here’s a secret-I really do like the Jets.

There’s an unwritten rule stating that you can’t root for two teams in the same sport, and this I disavow, just as I am decidedly using the passive tense here.  I root for teams based on family ties and where I’ve lived.  Blood is thicker than water and root, root, root for the home team-that’s how I see the sports world.  The Jets are my grandmother’s team, because she’s from New York.  She watched them win Super Bowl III and met Joe Namath long before he tried to cozy up to Suzy Kolber on national television.  So I like the Jets, maybe not as much as the Steelers or the Buccaneers, but they’re still OK in my book.

Unlike myself, Gary doesn’t hide his Jets love, even in Miami.  But no one greeted him with any boos or hisses.  Why?  Being famous helps, but it doesn’t spare you.  Just ask Rex Ryan.  A good sense of humor, however, can always get you out of even the tightest South Florida jam, even one as bad as that perpetual wall of grumbling steel and rubber you hit when I-95 turns into that three lane gridlock also known as US 1.

I knew he would drop a Jets reference at some point, and I was curious as to how he would sneak it in.  Outright Jets fandom is universally condemned here, so Gary wisely bided his time.  Humor is a crucial in a hostile environment, as I mentioned, and if you throw a little wine in the mix, you can consider your audience fully lubricated.

Gary V at “The Pulse of the Wine World”/ Chuck Ferrin

About an hour into the seminar, he told us that a Wine Library TV fan from MIT analyzed his wine scores and found that, on average, he rated wines 2.2 points higher when the Jets won on Sunday.  Everyone in the crowd showed their approval with a hearty laugh.  The Jets-Hah!  I usually hate their guts, but not so much right now. How did Gary pull off this magic trick?  He used wine, and wine can be funny.

So he let the people get a little buzzed before dropping the Jets reference, but this wasn’t a set-up, it felt sincere.  Gary is one of the few people on the critical side of the wine world who have been able to fuse the profound and the profane in the wine experience. Observing the result first-hand, I felt like wine tastings should be this way all the time, but they’re not.  By and large, the general public views wine as having a high-post, snobby image, and at first glance, it does.  But upon reflection, wine comes from and is destined for the masses.  Grapes are grown by dirt-plowing farmers, picked by ball-busting field workers, and fermented by wine makers who are usually hungry for their next job.

The economics behind wine further this point, and I’ve experience this first-hand on the sales end.  The vast majority of wine bottles sold at the retail level cost less than $10.  In fact, most of those bottles are under $8.  People will go to $15 at a push, and to $20 for something really special.  Anything beyond that $20 mark is a rare creature, yet the wine critics often don’t like to hunker down in these trenches.  Read any publication, any positive review, any featured wine, and you’ll notice that it’s probably over $20. There’s a good chance that it’s over $50, and no joking aside, there are plenty of Top 10 lists where almost none of the wines are under $100.

There’s a disconnect here, and the wine hungry world comprised of real, working people has been waiting for somebody to bridge this gap.  Gary Vaynerchuk deserves all the props in the world for being able to do that, just about as well as he bridges the gap between Jets and Dolphins fans.  It’s not easy, but with a glass of wine, a good sense of humor, and an honest opinion, it can be done.

It was thoroughly entertaining to see him in full form.  This crowd in this seminar was mostly comprised of two types of wine drinkers:  people who were new to wine altogether, and people who had spent most of their life drinking the same type of wine.  Beringer White Zinfandel, Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio and Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay drinkers were the dominant voice.

But this was a great crowd.  People sitting next to me asked me, in all honesty, why I was taking notes and what I was writing.  I said that I was going to write about the wine and that it was kind of a job.  Their universal response:  “Man, I want your job!”  That put things in perspective.  This isn’t just a good job–this is a great job.

I don’t get that in most wine tastings, because there’s just so much more posturing.  You never want to be exposed in front of your fellow tasters.  I recently had my first glass of Goldeneye Pinot Noir.  I told one taster, “I don’t think I’ve ever had an Anderson Valley Pinot Noir.”  He looked at me aghast and said, “Seriously?”  Yeah, seriously.  That’s a $50 bottle.  I can’t afford that, and most people are in the same boat as me (for what it’s worth, it was pretty darn good).  These people let Gary know that they were all new to everything in front of them.  They shot from the hip in their tastings, diving into wine that they had never tried before, even if they didn’t like it.  In many ways, this is the future of the wine world, and it’s good to see a high profile wine figure like Gary Vaynerchuk being excited to work with them.  This is a guy who can go to any tastings he wants, and he can drink those $100 bottles of wine every day.  He doesn’t have to cater to the $10 and under market, but he does.  And it’s worth it.

Americans, and a great deal of the people on Planet Earth, are interested in wine.  The total estimated retail wine sales for 2010 are $117 billion dollars.   Most of this money isn’t going to come from the wallet-busting, high-profile bottles on a Top 10 List.  It’s going to come from wine that proves itself through quality and value, and the folks who are going to spend that $117 billion are mostly new wine drinkers and people recently inclined to try new types of wine.

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According to the Redland Organics COMmmunity POST, the Roots in the City Farmers Market pilots this Wednesday, March 24th.  The Market witll be held on Wednesdays from 1 pm to 4 pm at the corner of NW 10th Street and 2nd Avenue.

This new pilot Farmers Market takes advantage of new SNAP (food stamp) rules which make it easier for local farmers to accept food stamps.  The new rules allow SNAP users to purchase double the value of their SNAP dollar when they buy from local farmers, thus making fresh produce more accessible.

Several organizations worked for three years to make this happen.  Dr. Marvin Dunn founded the original Roots in the City Overtown Community Garden.  He turned an overgrown, littered lot into a flourishing garden  maintained by Overtown residents and volunteers.  Now Roots in the City continues their work, in collaboration with Human Services Coalition, Michael’s Genuine, and with funding from Wholesome Wave.

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Here are some deals going on at local restaurants this week:

Name Your Own Price at Pardo’s Chicken

Pardo’s Chicken is letting customers name their own price for Tuesday’s lunch–a Peruvian-style rotisserie chicken meal.

When: Tuesday, Feb. 23 from 11:30 am to 3:30 pm

Where: Pardo’s Chicken, 2312 Ponce de Leon Boulevard, Coral Gables

How much: You decide.

Name Your Own Price at Morena Restaurant

“Name your own price” may be a trend.  When you call ahead at Morena Restaurant to make a reservation and mention the promotion, you will be allowed to pay what you consider a fair price for menu items.    Morena Restaurant is running the promotion to highlight Chef Hector Diaz’s (Maya Tapas & Grill) new Spanish and Argentine menu.  Menu items include four-cheese risotto with truffle aioli, braised short ribs, and Black Angus skirt steak with sweetbreads in lemon butter sauce.

When: Through Feb. 28

Where: Morena Restaurant, 1334 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach

How much: You decide.

Shrimp shumai/ Joan Ho (stock.xchang)

Maki Madness

For $12.95, Sushi Maki diners can choose three items for this fixed-price menu deal.  The deal is “here to stay,” according to the folks at Sushi Maki.  Maki Madness is available only at the Coral Gables, Pinecrest, and South Miami locations.  First course choices are miso soup or green salad with ginger dressing.  Second course choices are edamame, chicken gyoza, shrimp shumai, seafood sunomono, or hiyashi wakame.  The third course selections are the spicy tuna roll, dragon roll, JB tempura roll, university roll, or crunchy roll.

When: Indefinitely, for lunch or dinner

Where: Sushi Maki locations in Coral Gables, Pinecrest, and South Miami

How much: $12.95 for three-course menu

The Blissful 60 at Area 31

During this weekday happy hour, bar bites are $6 and selected drinks are $5.  Bar bites include parmesan fries and olive oil, fritto misto, white fish ceviche with aji amarillo and passion fruit,  Iberian pork paletta with Manchego, and lightly fried sweet peppers with sea salt and olive oil.  Cocktails include the “31″ Manhattan, Temptation, and Epic Sunset. Some beer and wine selections are also available for $5.

Here is Mango & Lime’s account of her happy hour visit to Area 31 last summer.  You can also learn more about Area 31’s sustainable seafood menu here.

When: Mondays through Fridays, 5 pm to 7pm

Where: Area 31 (16th floor of Epic Hotel), 270 Biscayne Boulevard Way, Miami

How much: $6 for bar bites, $5 for selected cocktails, wine, and beer

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