Food and Wine Festival serves up crowds, frustration

Organizers of the first Annapolis Food and Wine Festival admitted they were unprepared for the crowds that came into town Saturday for the event. While the festival gave exposure to downtown restaurants, it also left a trail of frustrated attendees, 45-minute lines and sold-out restaurants.

"We didn't have any particular number of people in mind when we set out," said Jim Barthold, general manager of City Dock Productions, which put on the event. "We're going to give refunds to anybody who doesn't feel they received their money's worth."

The event was billed as a way to experience Annapolis restaurants by giving participants a chance to meet with chefs and winemakers. At $35 a ticket, festival-goers were able to travel to participating restaurants to sample food and wine.

There were 22 restaurants involved in the event, including Cafe Normandie, Piccola Roma and Luna Blu. The event website posted a menu of offerings from each restaurant.

City Dock Productions decided to work with LivingSocial.com, which offers discounts to subscribers. The website offered a discount at about half the price and 2,000 tickets were sold in the course of a day, Barthold said. After that, City Dock announced that the event was sold out, but by then word had already spread.

The Capital received letters from readers who attended the event and were frustrated because the restaurants did not seem prepared. One reader said one restaurant was out of wine within the first 10 minutes. By 5 p.m., many restaurants had placed signs on their doors saying they had nothing more to offer ticket holders. The event was scheduled to run from 2 to 6 p.m.

Jeff Reiss and his wife came as a result of the Living Social promotion. They arrived at the beginning of the event and found that some restaurants either didn't have food ready or were coping with "lines that would move faster at Six Flags," Reiss wrote in an e-mail shortly after the event ended.

"A lot of the restaurants told us they were expecting 100 and then that went to 200 and 300 and 500 people within the first hour," said Reiss, who came with his wife from Kent Island.

He said he planned to send the organizers an e-mail with some suggestions. "Maybe they could have two sessions with limited groups in each session. Or possibly getting a tent and letting the restaurants bring their catering stuff down - then everybody's centralized."

The Annapolis Food and Wine Festival was conceived as an annual event, but its future is unclear. Barthold said he wants to talk to participating restaurant owners before he makes a decision about whether to bring it back.

"The event brought a lot of people into town that wouldn't have been here otherwise," Barthold said. Some restaurants "seemed to be able to deal with the crowds. They admitted they were busy and there were lines. … (But) the reason for the festival was to expose the restaurants to new clientele, and they felt they accomplished that."