A Taste of The Stew.

Byline: Jeff Houck

May 23--FIRST FEST: The image on the credential badge for last weekend's Tampa Bay Wine & Food Festival -- a swirling glass of red wine -- was the appropriate symbol. As with the glass, you could look at the festival as half-full or half-empty.

Held from Thursday to Saturday at the Don CeSar Resort on St. Pete Beach, the festival was an attempt by distributor Southern Wine and Spirits to replicate locally the success of its South Beach Wine & Food Festival.

Half-full: informative, authoritative and entertaining food and wine seminars that were well-received; a variety of restaurants and wine and spirit offerings in the grand tasting tent; a fun "Iron Chef"-style competition; a sold-out black-tie dinner and bubble bash people were talking about the next day; tens of thousands of dollars raised in a live auction for the Abilities Foundation; perfect weather; a sprinkling of tropical weirdness; and, of course, the Don and its extremely helpful staff.

Half-empty: two kid-oriented cooking classes canceled at the last minute for lack of ticket sales; a grand tasting tent that at times had more vendors than customers; nonexistent parking that forced participants to drive five miles back over the Pinellas Bayway and park at Ceridian Corp. on 34th Street, where shuttles ran every 15 minutes. (Seminar presenter Andrea Gonzmart of the Columbia Restaurant was 20 minutes late Saturday because she couldn't park on site.)

From the start, the event had challenges, not the least of which came the day they announced the event. That morning, March 28, a freighter lost power and ran aground 400 yards from the Sunshine Skyway bridge. The breaking news event siphoned all the TV crews from coming to the news conference launch. Not even the assistance of budding food celebrity Robert Irvine could draw the cameras that day. Organizers were playing catch-up on publicity from that point forward.

"I think we have a success on our hands, especially for a first-year ...