Calling All Rock Stars in Aprons

MIAMI

Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Alex Quesada for The New York Times

HOLD THE BOAR Patrons take part in Burger Bash at the festival.

“BOBBY’S doing an event at the Delano hotel,” said Lee Brian Schrager, the founder of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. “Mario is doing an Ernst Benz watch event, Rachael’s doing a wine event. Even Eater.com is doing a party at Duomo.”

Mr. Schrager was referring, of course, to Bobby Flay, Mario Batali and Rachael Ray with the same first-name nonchalance Hollywood-types reserve for Angelina and Brad.

Sitting in the passenger seat of a Cadillac Escalade provided by a sponsor to ferry him around South Beach this weekend, Mr. Schrager, who started this festival seven years ago, was fretting about the number of unofficial side events that are starting to proliferate.

There are 54 official events at the festival, ranging from a 0-a-head tribute dinner for Jean-Georges Vongerichten with courses prepared by Nobu Matsuhisa, Claudia Fleming and Jacques Torres, to an obesity awareness event for children given by Arthur Agatston, the author of “The South Beach Diet.”

There are rumblings that this celebrity-drenched food festival, like the once-homey and now hyperactively crowded Sundance Film Festival presided over by Robert Redford, is in danger of being taken up a notch too far.

“Our talent used to be able to walk around the Grand Tasting Tent,” said Mr. Schrager, referring to the beachside tents where Sean Combs was scheduled to promote a new vodka brand on Saturday as dozens of chefs conduct demonstrations. “It’s not like that anymore. These people have become rock stars. A lot of them have security now.”

There are no swag rooms yet, but on a weekend when much of the talk here focused on Emeril Lagasse’s million deal to sell his television shows and licensed products to Martha Stewart’s company, can diamond-encrusted whisk giveaways to celebrity chefs be far behind?

Even Mr. Lagasse sounded more like an M.B.A. than a chef on Thursday night, when he boasted about the advantages of his deal with Ms. Stewart.

“As soon as the deal closes, we will add Ebita to Martha’s company,” he said, which stands for earnings before interest, taxes and amortization.

You want a little a butter with that?

Although the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colo., is nearly two decades older, no other food festival in the United States has attained the sudden prominence of South Beach, which Mr. Schrager, who enthusiastically schmoozes with nearly every prominent figure in the food world, is fond of calling “spring break for chefs.”

Total attendance should reach a complete sell-out of 35,000 people, he said, up 15 percent from last year and 900 percent from the festival’s South Beach debut in 2001.

What started in 1999 as a one-day wine festival on the campus of Florida International University to raise money for its hospitality school has evolved into a gigantic four-day event, which dominates South Beach and this year is expected to raise million for the university.

For the main event Thursday night, 2,000 carnivores paid 0 each to judge which hamburger is the best in America. Tucking into a burger topped with wild boar bacon and sunnyside-up quail eggs from Love Shack in Forth Worth and 17 other challengers, was an assortment of food celebrities, including Ms. Ray, Ming Tsai and Geoffrey Zacharian.

Standing on crutches and munching on a beef burger served on a cheddar-cheese biscuit prepared by chefs from Table Fifty-Two in Chicago was Christi Elias, a contractor from Coral Gables, Fla. She had broken her left foot in a boating accident last week, but refused to let the injury prevent her from rubbing elbows with her favorite TV chefs.

“This is more exciting to me than watching the Academy Awards,” she said as a cover band performed “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and Ms. Ray endured blistering cascades of camera flashes nearby.

The winning burger was one topped with cheddar, crispy onions and horseradish sauce from Radius restaurant in Boston.

A few feet south on the sand was the set of NBC’s “Today” show, which had come to Miami for a live broadcast, featuring the chefs Giada De Laurentiis, Tyler Florence and Jamie Oliver. Michael Jordan was expected this weekend at the BubbleQ, an evening event which pairs Champagne and barbecue.

Mr. Schrager, 48, who is not related to the hotelier Ian Schrager, has a colorful South Beach history.

In 1989, he opened Torpedo, a gay bar.

“The opening night act was the Del Rubio Triplets,” Mr. Schrager said. “Three girls, three guitars, one tube of lipstick.”

When he was hired as director of special events for the Miami-based liquor distributor Southern Wine & Spirits, which is a host of the festival with Florida International, he moved the event to South Beach in 2001. He called the restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, a longtime friend, and convinced him to persuade Alain Ducasse to appear.

“I said, ‘Jeffrey, if I don’t launch with a legitimate star, it will never take off,’ ” Mr. Schrager recalled.

As the Food Network created more and bigger cooking stars, Mr. Schrager lured them down to South Beach, seducing them with flights, hotel rooms and fresh flowers with handwritten notes. When Brooke Johnson became the president of the television network in 2004, Mr. Schrager called.

“I said, ‘Why should I sponsor the festival?’ ” Ms. Johnson said in a telephone interview. “All my people are there. It looks like the Food Network festival already, and I’m getting it for free.”

Mr. Schrager persisted. He explained that the network could use the event to entertain potential advertisers and clients.

“Lee is a big bundle of energy,” Ms. Johnson said. “It took him 18 months to show me the error of my ways, and now I’m paying for it.”

For many celebrity chefs, whose paths to potential riches come not from their television salaries but from licensing deals and cookbook sales, the festival is a must-attend event.

And it’s nice to be in Miami in February.

“I’ll probably play three rounds of golf the two days I’m there,” Mr. Batali said before leaving New York. “They put us up in nice hotels. They make a light workload so the public can see us and us the public.”

A version of the festival will soon be headed north. Last week Mr. Schrager came to an agreement with New York officials to run a two-day food festival in the meatpacking district on Columbus Day weekend. “We’re going to close Ninth Avenue,” he said.

Big stuff. Too Big?

Over lunch at Joe’s Stone Crab during festival week, Jaime Jewell, Delta Air Line’s general manager for sponsorships, pledged her company’s continued support to Mr. Schrager. She contrasted the excitement here with Sundance, saying the airline plans to fill out its three-year commitment to the film festival in Utah but not to renew it.

“You want to get involved in something when it’s new and growing and vibrant,” Ms. Jewell said. “Not when it’s overblown and done.”

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