Ottawa Wine and Food Festival [Events]

2015 Oct 25
Does anyone know which restaurants and breweries will be participating this year? I cannot find anything online.

2015 Oct 27
Have a feeling it's going to be a huge bust this year. Extremely poor weekend to have it on. Heard many restaurants owners and Chefs are unimpressed and wary of participating...

2015 Oct 27
It does seem to be an unfortunate weekend for the event! I'll likely be there on Sunday afternoon. My interest is in sampling wine and discovering liquor.

According to Facebook, 4000 people said they're going to the event. Only 4 of those are my friends. ;-)

2015 Oct 27
I haven't seen a listing of the vendors on their website but their Twitter page provides a bit of info on some of the vendors mobile.twitter.com

Update - there's also a bit more info on foodieprints: foodieprints.com

2015 Oct 29
It is a real leap of faith for me to pay the money to go to an event where I cannot figure out who is exhibiting within my fields of interest . To be honest, I avoid any events that do not allow in/out privileges (a policy that should be banned btw).
It's akin to a hostage taking. In this case, with no chance of Stockholm Syndrome. I guess I just need to know what I can eat between sampling of craft beers of which I also need to know what is available. Simple really.

2015 Oct 29
*shrug* I'm still going Sunday afternoon. It's discounted.

2015 Oct 31
I'm here now and it's great!!! they did way better then last year. If you don't go your missing out! There's a sparkling wine lounge, great live music, the caviar king with Acadian caviar and sturgeon is here:))) Everything is super good and better range of sampling in terms of cost and variety. Well done!!!

2015 Oct 31
Acadian sturgeon and caviar.

2015 Oct 31
Bread pudding with pineapple rum sauce, paired fantastically with angostura:))))

2015 Oct 31
Evoo

2015 Oct 31
Oysters!

2015 Oct 31
There's a few cheese booth, local resto like hooch, brasserie industrial, kinki, lower town, a few breweries, spirit and wine places (Santorini white wine was very nice!), free pear tasting ect.... And quite a few people were in costumes even at the afternoon session (zombies, ghostbusters, Lincoln, bottle of tequila, leprechaun etc...)

2015 Oct 31
LF, thanks for going to the trouble to post.

2015 Nov 1
Can you buy food to take home, or is it just items you sample there.
I used to go to this show,but have not gone in a couple years.

I am somewhat tempted by this event but have some art workshops all weekend,so some other time maybe.

I don't really like to pay for cheese samples or dessert samples, but for cheese Whole Foods has a cheese tasting on a Tues every month for free.
I've gone to 4 of them so far and there has been anywhere from 2-8 cheese samples...and large samples too.
In Oct it was fondue and Swiss samples, there was a fondue and also raclette cheese to sample.

Another time it was British cheese and there was 8 dif cheeses in very big cubes to try.
They also have things like back to school food,gluten free, holiday food tasting.
There is a schedule with the whole foods events you can get in-store that is printed and possibly online.

2015 Nov 2
I was there for about 2.5 hours on Sunday afternoon. Food at this kind of event is inevitably expensive and of poor quality compared to that prepared and served in a restaurant, so I go mostly for the opportunity to sample liquor and wine without having to buy a whole bottle.

It bothers me a bit that they charge a significant cover just to get in and then charge a (usually) high price to sample a product while salespeople advertise at you. Yuck. I also noticed that only about half the products had "price" tags (1 ticket, 2 tickets, etc) on them. Too often, we had to inquire as to the price of a sample or piece of food. My wife and I had been invited by the organizer so we were able to put the money we saved on tickets towards our food and drink.

I was happy for the opportunity to sample a tiny spoon of Acadian Sturgeon caviar for $2 (as opposed to $82 for 30 grams at Costco). It tasted like extra salty and fishy lox. I prefer lox.

A very nice find was the Oat and Mill booth where, for $5, we received a generous cup of Apple Crumble Oat Ice Cream. The slightly gelatinous texture of this dairy-free dessert worked well with the apple crumble and other flavours. Yum!

The Kinki booth had a Sunday blowout sale on: any 2 items for $3. I had the beef-quinoa tostada and the pork taco in this picture. Tasty and well priced indeed! The nice lady there offered me a free sample of their white sangria. It had a distinct lychee flavour and was deeelicious!

There were not nearly as many liquor vendors represented as I'd have liked. A severely overpriced Trinidad & Tobago tourism booth offered some rum options. I purchased a sample of Georgian Bay Gin (I found it nasty) and Ungava Gin, which was nice, but more like a gin-based liqueur than a true gin.

The number of booths seemed to be fewer than during my last visit two years ago. Word on the street is that people had a great time earlier in the weekend.

2015 Nov 3
Thanks for the info!
I haven't been in a few years,but used to go on the Sunday and a lot of the vendors would give away stuff at the end.

I try to not pay for liquor samples, most of the time-but the food does sound like there were some neat options to try.
Usually I do not buy too much alcohol while out-I am lucky to be able to use the bar credits of a couple of friends :)
-my stepfather also collects wine and opens a bottle almost every day for dinner and guests.
I actually tried one of the super expensive Lafitte wines,didn't realize it was an almost $5,000 bottle of wine.
Not something I will be trying again soon!

Not really a "wine and food show" but I know at the museum of civilization in hull- there is a holiday market sometime in Dec or late Nov and there is always wine and cheese samples and you can buy wine to take home from a few local vineyards.