I South Beach Wine & Food Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary over the weekend with a host of Food Network stars and other A-list culinary talents. As always, it was a weekend of delicious food, copious amounts of booze and fans feasting on their favorite cooking competition stars, soaking up the love and happiness. It was also a weekend about rebirth, renewal and next steps.
“In South Beach this year, I’m representing my new restaurant that I just opened in Dallas, which is Night Rooster,” Chef Shirley Chung told the Observer on Friday, 10 hours before the Antonia Lofaso-led team of Chung, Stephanie Izard, Tobias Dorzon, Joe Sasto and Jonathon Sawyer won the festival. Tournament of Champions Live event. “When I saw the posters at the event, you should have seen me laughing, you know I’m back, I’m really back.
It was an amazing time for Chung, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 tongue cancer in 2024 and is now in remission. Two years ago, he wondered if he was nearing the end of his life. He wondered if he would ever taste good food again or cook in a restaurant. And now here he was, serving lu rou pork belly baos on the beach, snapping photos with fans, dancing and headbanging on stage with his chef friends at a lavish party hosted by Guy Fieri.
“There’s nothing stopping me now,” said Chung, winner of the Food Network’s first season Tournament of Champions in 2025, he told us earlier in the day. “I still have a lot of opportunities to come. I live fearlessly. I don’t say no. I want to live my life to the fullest and experience everything. I’ll probably be more extreme than before. There’s nothing holding me back.”
There were a number of celebrity chefs enjoying themselves without holding anything back on Friday night.
“Ready to get schmaltzy?” Chef Eric Greenspan shouted Tournament of Champions Live crowd as he serves up schmaltzy salami sandwiches of his own The New School American cheese. “We’re about to get schmaltzy.”
Then the DJ played “Jump Around,” and Greenspan started doing Running Man. It’s clear he’s here to throw down as he gives visitors a glimpse of the not-so-distant future.
Greenspan recently left the The Tesla Diner focus on opening his next Jewish meal, Mish, in Los Angeles this spring. Friday night’s event was Mish’s public preview, and Greenspan was in a ecstatic mood.
“Mish is my dream project,” Greenspan, who has been thinking about opening the deli for nearly a decade, told the Observer. “It’s my life’s goal. I mean, look, I got 99 percent of the dopamine I was going to get out of the Tesla Diner project in the first three weeks. And after that, it was time to do this.”
The essence of the weekend, in many ways, was a new beginning. Dorzon, who runs at Maryland’s Houses in Huncho and after recovering from being shot 11 times in a 2024 armed robbery, he cheered as he stood on stage next to Chung. Earlier in the day at Bistro Collins inside Loews Miami Beach, rapper Ja Rule (who was in Miami to perform at the festival’s Grand Tasting Village) showed off his brewing skills as he poured his fresh new honey. Amber and Opal whiskey. Later on Friday night, Kwame Onwuachi hosted the Las’ Lap Link Up event with Nina Compton and served curry mussel toast as a show Maroona Caribbean steakhouse he is working to open in the Sahara casino area of Las Vegas this spring.
New power couple Bobby Flay and Brooke Williamson made the rounds, starting with a private opening party at the W South Beach, where getting a drink at the back bar meant passing chefs like Chung, Greenspan, Izard, Michael and Bryan Voltaggio, Chris Oh, Eric Adjepong, Aaron May, Burt Bakman, Michael White, Tim Love, Todd English Agazzi.
It was that kind of star-studded weekend all over South Beach as chefs hopped to their favorite parties and restaurants. We joined Chung for a casual lunch at a Cuban restaurant in Puerto Sagua on Friday. It turned into an Impromptu Food Network meeting because Kevin Lee, Shota Nakajima, Nini Nguyen and Leah Cohen also decided to visit Puerto Sagua. Many guest chefs, including Chung, Greenspan, May, Izard and Mei Lin, also donned bibs to dine at the legendary Joe’s Stone Crab over the weekend.
It was a weekend where everyone ate well. Our favorite bites include chef Danny Grant Eighth Bar the burger and its creamy Szechuan pasta salad at Burger Bash on Thursday night; Wan’s Chef Alex Kuk’s traditional hot and sour soup at the Thursday night Asian Night Market hosted by Jet Tila and Aarti Sequeira; The natives chef Nyesha Arrington’s buttermilk fried chicken sandwich at Tournament of Champions Live; Jamaican cuisine Chef Anson Chin’s jerk pork and The Queen Patty chef Daniel Lai’s wagyu/Scotch bonnet patties at Las’ Lap Link Up; again Lumpia Bros Chef David Dualan’s pancit at the Grand Tasting Village.
This was a historic year for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. But in many ways, it feels like things are starting at this festival and the chefs who come here to cook, have fun, see their loved ones, meet their fans and be reminded of the resilience of people.
“They are all my friends here, and this is one of the happiest moments of my last two years,” Chung said. “I’m ready to do so much more.”
