The Food & Wine Show January 14, 2012!

On January 14th, my sister Mom and I went to the Food & Wine show at the Western Fair. This was my second time going, my Mom's third and my sisters first time! We plan on making it an annual event. We went a bit earlier than usual at 2pm since Steph had to get home a bit earlier, which actually worked well because the crowd didn't show up until about 4/5pm. And this is a super popular event so the crowd gets large! It was $12 each for admission then we bought about $30 worth of drink/food tickets. About a $50 night for some delicious food and LOTS of wine!!

When you first enter the building, this is the table of glasses where you pick up your wine glass for the day. You keep the glass as a souvenir as well afterward. You use the same glass throughout the day and the wine booths will rinse your glass in between wines or there are little glass washing stations throughout the building.

This year, I was really pleased with the wines we tried out. Usually a sample of wine is about 1-3 tickets (1-3 dollars), and for the more expensive ones (such as the Vintages) you pay 4-6 tickets. We stuck with the 1-2 ticket wines and were able to try a lot of local wineries such as the one on Dundas St. past the Trails End market - they had some nice fruity wines.

My sister, Mom and I after receiving our leis from  the "party section" of the food & wine show. Last year, the theme was Mardi Gras and they were giving out beads and this year, it seemed to be a beach-style theme, giving out floral leis and the employees were dressed in Hawaiian shirts. This is the only section of the show that played loud, fun music.

There are a lot of demonstrations that you can watch or participate in throughout the day, but the only one that we saw was a cheese-wine pairing and there was a long wait for it, so we didn't get to participate. There was a cooking demonstration on the main stage that we caught some of.

Our favourite booth!! They have this booth every year and last year, My Mom and I went back several times, and same as this year! We got about 3 of these delicious shots: little chocolate coated ice cream cones filled with Panama Jacks (which is like Baileys but with a wine base) - Butter Rum flavour! topped with whipped cream and sprinkles! Delic!

The Indian food was soooo delicious. For 6 tickets you get a plate of assorted Indian food. We absolutely had to get it because you could smell it from a distance. The chicken that I had was really spicy but everything was super good. I had never tried Indian from the Raja before because Aleksy and I tend to stick with Taste of India on York St which we love, but I know now that the Raja is also worth a shot next time we get take-out.