Phantom Gourmet’s Food & Wine Phest

Miss Yunks and friends went to the Phantom Gourmet’s Food & Wine Phest this past Saturday. For 4 hours, we walked around Bayside Expo Center sampling several brands of wine and a variety of foods.

The wine vendors represented several different types of wines coming from various wineries around the world. All wine samples were in these little tiny plastic cups. I suppose three sips is enough to tell if you like a wine, but no one would’ve complained if the sample cups were a bit larger.Some wine vendors gave out coupons for bottles and other fun freebies – I picked up a wine pourer for no spills pouring! My favorite wine was the Smoking Loon Cabernet. A bottle sells as low as $8.99 at www.wine.com.

I was surprised to see Ed Hardy has his name on Sangria.
This table also gave away temporary tattoos, and even applied them for you! We all passed on the tattoos but sampled the sangria. It was okay – not great – would not purchase.

All of the food vendors’ tables had very long lines, but perhaps the longest lines were at The Cabby Shack and The Upper Crust Pizza. The Cabby Shack gave out small bowls of their clam chowder, which they claimed to be “the best chowdah evah!” If you agreed, and shouted it out loud, you could get a free cozy. I obviously did not try the clam chowder but consensus was it’s way too buttery. The Upper Crust gave out pizza slices with various toppings. I really like Upper Crust pizza but the pizza here was not up to par with that found at the restaurant. It only tasted okay and we were slightly disappointed.

My favorite food was the whoopie pies at Wicked Whoopies. They had three flavors individually wrapped: strawberry, red velvet, and classic. Check out their website – the whoopie pies look as good as they taste! Whoopie pies and cupcakes have a lot in common, they’re just dressed differently.

I was also able to sample Simply Divine Brownies. They were, of course, simply divine.

Overall, the Food & Wine Phest was a fun experience to share with friends and I was happy to sample different wines and desserts; however nothing was overly impressive. I think this will be a one time only event!