Riviera Maya Wine & Food Festival to Expand in 2014, Attract More Americans

WTF? A Food and Wine Festival without Guy Fieri, Tyler Florence, Super Mario or Tim Love? How can that be??

Well, it can’t, which is why the folks who run the globally flavored Cancun-Riviera Maya Wine & Food Festival have decided to mate with Food & Wine’s world dominating empire after two years of flying without their parachute.

I’ve been down here in Mexico since late last week, soaking in the sun and marinating in enough mezcal to pickle the rest of my liver (and probably yours, too) to know you can’t celebrate “the best Europe and the Americas have to offer from some of their best chefs” without actually having some of the best chefs in the Americas attend, and since the Mayan calendar is still clicking off days, the Americas includes the states to Mexico’s north.

“We hope to attract many more Americans to the festival next year,” a publicist told me at one of the tastings yesterday. Of the hundreds of guests swirling around the pools and event tents here this week, most seem to be either Mexican bon vivants or American vacationers who were already here and decided to hitch a ride on the flavor train.

“We’ll be announcing that many American chefs will be participating next year,” added the publicist.