Beginning on Tuesday, April 22, Columbia will play host its longest ever food and wine festival, featuring new locations and events where a wide variety of local restaurateurs and vendors will come together for 16 distinct events billed to showcase different sides of Columbia’s vibrant culinary culture.
The festival, which is in its eighth year of operation, is a nonprofit, run by the Post and Courier foundation. Vickie Davis, who serves as co-chair of the event, said the organizers want to highlight the best Columbia chefs and mixologists have to offer.
“The festival’s main goal is showcasing the Midlands area’s hospitality industry, from chefs and restaurants (and) mixologists,” Davis said.
Davis said the festival has grown each year following its inception, going from a one-day event in 2018 its first year to its current, expanded six-day format.
The festival's 16 events will be a record-high, with its first ever under-21 event coming from downtown staple Italian Villa Tronco. The event, Ping Pong and Pasta, is a ping pong tournament scheduled for April 26, with a percentage of proceeds going towards scholarships for underprivileged students.
Tripp Roche, a fifth-generation owner of Villa Tronco and founder of table tennis club Carolina Pong, said it should be a fun time.
“It’s an all-inclusive, all ages ping pong tournament,” Roche said. “It’s going to hopefully draw a lot of new faces in.”
In addition to the competition, the event will also feature a virtual reality ping pong experience, which Roche said he expects to be a big hit with younger crowds and help introduce them to the sport.
“It’s groundbreaking technology, I’d like to say,” Roche said. “There’s professionals in these VR games, it’s like a whole subset of the sport. So we wanted to introduce that to people to say, ‘Hey, if you like video games, you like ping pong, here, we’ve got something for you.’”
David Adedokun, a local mixologist and bar manager at The Dragon Room, said his top event is the Cocktail Games, a competition to craft the best unique cocktail and will feature more competitors than ever before.
Adedokun said the games will present a great opportunity for mixologists to showcase their skills to the community, including both the public and their peers. Adedokun said he hopes that feeling extends to every provider participating in the festival.
“It’s celebrating our food and beverage culture and giving everybody a space to kind of come around and show the community what they do,” Adedokun said. “Events like this give people in the industry a chance to kind of hobnob ... catch up and trade small plates and drinks and catch up on what everyone’s doing, foster that sense of camaraderie.”
With the festival focusing on both dining and drinking, Adedokun said great chefs know to mix the two in meaningful ways.
“It’s not just an accident or happenstance if you have a drink and it tastes really good with a dish you’re eating,” Adedokun said. “That little bit of thought has come into that.”
All the festival’s events lead up to its finale, the Grand Tasting, a garden-set gathering that will allow visitors to experience the festival’s varied flavors all in one place. Roche, whose Villa Tronco will be serving the classic Italian appetizer bruschetta, said the event lives up to its bold name.
“It’s like the cherry on top,” Roche said. “It’s a great time, especially for people that are new to the community or the area that want to try out a lot of restaurants.”
Davis said the combination of food and ambiance makes the Grand Tasting a premier destination for any Columbia foodie.
“The atmosphere and the location, it’s beautiful,” Davis said. “You get to walk around and sample different types of food and drinks, and it really is the social event for Columbia in the spring.”
Although tickets for the Grand Tasting aren’t cheap at $85, Davis said the value, with the event’s wide selection of vendors and live music, makes it a reasonable price point.
“Eighty-five dollars gets you samples from over 60 restaurants, 20 wineries,” Davis said. “It’s hard to find another event giving you that much for that price.”
Adedokun said cultural celebrations like the food and wine festival are the key to making Columbia thrive.
“The difference between a place where you live and a place that you can call home is what events like this, I feel like, are meant to push a city towards,” Adedokun said. “So I hope it continues to push it towards that, to make it a place where you find unexpected coziness and a deep sense of community.”
A full calendar and tickets for each event, which will take place from April 22 to April 27, can be found on the festival’s website.