Lee Brian Schrager - The Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival Cookbook: Recipes and Behind-the-Scenes Stories from Americas Hottest Chefs

Every year for the past five years, near the end of February, when the weather in New York is miserable and cold and Ive been working too hard and away from friends too long, an escape is offered. I load a bathing suit, my loudest Hawaiian shirt, my most deteriorated jeans, and a pair of sandals into a suitcase and fly to Miami for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.

I was never really a Miami fan. I was immune to the charms of Miami Vice, wondering always how many times a day Sonny Crockett had to change his white jacket. But for a few days each year, I step into a delicious alternate universe, a South Beach filled with wonderful things to eat, bags full of free stuff, and long afternoons at the pool accompanied by frosty boat drinks. And all my friends are there.

I got my first swag bag at the Festivala benchmark moment in my careerentering my ludicrously large room at the Raleigh to find a sky-high tower of merch: professional-quality pots and pans, vanadium steel knives, every variety of appliance, a beach towel, liquors of many lands, and bottles of enticing mystery liquids ranging from energy water to exfoliant. I still have that lovely free beach toweland my pores are cleaner than ever.

Ah, the many adventures. The festival seems to invite momentsand hoursof forgetfulness. Certainly it is advisable from a legal point of view to claim amnesia. Thinking back over the years, its a tumble of images: padding onto the stage on the beach, sunburned and barefoot, fresh from the surf. Was that last yearor the year beforeor is it every year? A hooting mob of industry types on Fridays, a more general audience on Saturdays. I remember screening the film I narrated, Decoding Ferran Adri, forFerran Adri (among the most terrifying and ultimately gratifying moments in my life) and, later, scooping the last Iranian beluga in the country into my face.

Then, at the delightfully divey Macs Club at four in the morning, I remember seeing Nancy Silverton across the bar, still going strong. Nigella Lawson, barefoot and legs tucked under her on a couch, offering me cheese and charcuterieand cigarettes. Thomas Keller smiling mischievously at me and my soon wife-to-be from across a crowded dance floor. Elena Arzak plating food for the meal honoring Eric Ripert. Eric the next day, doing the breaststroke across the Raleigh pool, careful not to get his hair wet. Gabrielle Hamilton on her first trip to the festival, peeking around suspiciously and wonderingas I once didwhat the hell she was doing here. The inexplicably energetic Iron Man of many continents, Daniel Boulud (one of the few chefs who needs only one name), dancing, a drink in his hand, somehow everywhere at once. Michael Ruhlman, sitting with me over drinks, about to get himself blackballed from television by agreeing to present our libelous Golden Clog Awards a ludicrously faux award presentation ceremony in which we honored luminaries of the food world with hastily painted kitchen clogs, in categories like Worst Career Move and Greatest Achievement in Hooves, Guts or Snouts, with one presenter after another mysteriously vaporizing at the last minute. Rocco DiSpirito generously and good-naturedly agreed to present his namesake Rocco Award for Worst Career Move. (The recipient showed no such good humor.)

The memory I have of Emeriland one that, in many ways, sums up his true natureis that every year, after the ceremonies, and after the parties, when a carload of drunken chefs on the spur of the moment decide to swing by Emerils, he is always to be found in the kitchen. An almost empty dining room, the last of the lingering dinner crowd, a boisterous incursion of colleagues at short noticeand there is Emeril, hunched over an outgoing order, looking up with a smile and greetings, happier in this element, a real, professional kitchen, than youve ever seen him on TV.

Party waiting to happen: Terry Zarikian, Aarn Sanchez, Tony Bourdain, and Eric Ripert. Giada is always one of our favorites.

And, of course, I remember one particular carload of badly behaved chefsan incongruous assemblage, to be sure: me, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver, Mark Ladner, Adam Perry Langcrammed into the backseat of Lee Schragers car, Lee chatting urgently but patiently over the phone, accommodating some last-minute diva, dealing with one of a thousand chef-related disasters large and small that he will face this weekend. Arranging for the disposal of a body, perhaps. Were on our way to a rooftop cocktail party? The Club Deuce? The Versace Mansion? To play capture the flag on the beach? To Emerils to smoke cigars on the terrace and gossip about our peers and our betters? I dont remember. It could have been any or all of them.

None of this, neither madness nor glory, could have happened without Lee Schrager, who put the whole circus together, starting out in 2002 with 7,000 attendees and a dream. With astonishing speed he turned it into the combination Woodstock, Sundance, Cannes, and Altamont of the food world, the worlds premier gathering of chefsboth spectacle (for ever larger audiences) and refuge (for the chefs). For these few days in February, many of the greatest chefs in the world will meet like Mafia dons and relax. They will gossip, they will eat, they will party, they will reacquaint with old friends, they will receive news of far-flung associates and developments near and farand, oh yeah, they will cook. While Rachael and Sandra and Guy and all the familiar Food Network faces have become more prominently represented, the professional dimensionthe beating heartremains strong.