Enjoy Arts and Tastes at the Eat St. Pete Festival, FL

Miami has a food festival. New York has several too. There’s the Taste of Chicago, the LA Food & Wine Festival, and now there’s Eat. St Pete. So mark your calendar for November 15-17th: celebrity chefs Donatella Arpaia, Duff Goldman, Ingrid Hoffmann, Lorena Garcia, Masaharu Morimoto, Ming Tsai, Scott Conant and Todd English are coming to St. Petersburg, Florida. What’s unique about Eat St. Pete, is the collaboration between local artists, celebrity chefs, and local restauranteurs. It seems so natural, yet it’s never been done. After all, is chefs not an culinary artists? Do painters not need tasty treats?

I was fortunate enough to fly down to St. Petersburg, FL for the Eat. St Pete press conference. I hopped on a (private!) plane with Donatella Arpaia, Scott Conant, and Herb Karlitz to meet with Mayor Bill Foster and entrepreneur Bill Edwards for the official announcement.

Donatella was kind enough to bring some of her signature cupcakes, which were a huge hit with the other chefs! They will soon be featured on HSN, so stay tuned. After an awesome and exciting long and tedious day of networking, schmoozing, cupcake-eating, champagne-drinking, and “meetings,” we headed back to New York. All I can say is, I think I hit the jack-pot with this new job. Oh, and I can’t wait for the festival in November. I’m sure it will be a huge hit! For more information, check out their website at www.eatstpetefestival.com and stay connected via Facebook and Twitter. Click to view slideshow.