Six years ago, this event began as a 2-day food festival. It has since ballooned to include pre-parties, pre-pre-parties, celebrity chef cooking demonstrations and post-parties.

The crux of the event features large tents at the Newport Civic Center with top talent from 40 primarily-Newport based chefs and a literal GOB of crazy good wines at the ready. Our only representative from Laguna is Chef Rainer Schwarz with Driftwood Kitchen (and Laguna Niguel’s Hendrix), a significant decline in top-ranked chefs who used to participate from our culinary town. (I find this a bit sad even though I adore many of the chefs in attendance this year.)

Celebrity Chef demonstrations this year feature Hubert Keller, Nobu Matuhisa, Richard Blais of Junier + Ivy and Shirley Chung of Ms Chi Cafe. Master Somms Michael Jordan, Peter Neptune and Georg Riedel descend as well with fun wine-tasting events that are added plusses to the general admin tickets.

Purchase a $150 ticket for Friday’s 5:00 p.m. BBQ at the Balboa Bay Resort beach. Or, purchase a $150 ticket for access to the tasting gardens on Saturday or Sunday with 40 top chefs serving up tasters and more than 250 wine, spirit and brew representatives. (A weekend pass for Saturday and Sunday is $250).

Go for “Platinum packages” at $250 each day (or $400 for the weekend) that add in meet-and-greets with celebrity chefs and early access.

Or, throw in for the “Diamond Club” at $500 each day, which gives you Diamond Lounge access that includes 2-hour wine tastings, charcuterie and cheese plates, 2-hour cocktail service, the Riedel Extreme Wine Glass class and tastings of more rare and reserve wines.