Food and Wine Festival returning

Annual event, which was canceled last year, will be modified amid pandemic

The Greater Fort Lauderdale Food and Wine Festival, canceled like countless events in 2020, is returning for the first time since its 2019 inaugural year.

The week-long festival runs from Monday, March 15, to Sunday, March 21, including dining events at Heritage, Sardelli Italian Steakhouse, Sistrunk Marketplace & Brewery and the Atlantic Hotel & Spa’s fifth floor pool deck.

But here’s the COVID news: The festival’s largest events will be postponed until 2022 including The Grand Tasting, GFL on the Rise and Family Day. Anyone who purchased tickets to one of these three events in 2020 can roll-over their tickets to next year or apply their ticket values to one of this year’s events, according to organizers.

“The festival week will be comprised of six experiences, which will have reduced capacities and place safety as a top priority,” said Kate Reed, co-founder of the festival. “All events will follow CDC guidelines and local mandates and masks will be required

accordingly.”

The opening night event featuring a fivecourse dinner at chefowner Rino Cerbone’s Heritage restaurant is already sold out. Cerbone, a former musician, opened Flagler Village’s first fine dining restaurant last February and has restaurant roots in South Florida working in his parents’ restaurants as a child.

Organizers say ticket sales for all of the festival’s dinners are limited.

“On a normal night, restaurants are limiting capacity for social distancing purposes, and the dinners taking place during the festival week will be no different,” said Phil Marro, another founder of the festival.

Tickets are available for other pop-up dining and drinking events around town including Hip-Hop Beats and Wagyu Beets at Sardelli Italian Steakhouse in Hollywood on March 16 and Cocktail Confidential at Sistrunk Marketplace and Brewery in Fort Lauderdale on March 17. Other events include the Shady Distillery Dinner on March 18, combining a four-course meal with a cocktail. Then the festival’s “Veg Out” event on March 19 offers wine pairings with a plantbased dinner by Chefs Josie Smith Malave and Paula DaSilva at the Atlantic Hotel & Spa Ocean View Terrace in Fort Lauderdale.

The festival ends with a “Catch the Love” Toy Drive on Sunday, March 21, at Cali Coffee in Hollywood. The drive up is free and guests can donate a new, unwrapped toy to benefit Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.

The second Greater

Fort Lauderdale Food and Wine Festival takes place at multiple venues March 15-21. For tickets and information, go to

JOHN MCCALL/ SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL Chef Rino Cerbone inside his Fort Lauderdale Italian restaurant Heritage on March 4, 2020. His opening night event for the 2021 Greater Fort Lauderdale Food and Wine Festival, March 15-21, is already sold out.