NYC Wine & Food Festival could boost struggling South Street Seaport

After a one-year stint in Brooklyn, The New York City Wine & Food Festival will be back in Manhattan this week — potentially giving a much-needed boost to the South Street Seaport.Now in its 18th year, NYCWFF runs this Wednesday through Sunday and has an all-star lineup led by Jean-Georges Vongerichten.As the festival’s first “culinary curator,” he will oversee more than 50 events – from grand tastings to an intimate $2,000 per ticket dinner for 12 people hosted by top chef and humanitarian José Andrés.In 2016, Vongerichten partnered with the Howard Hughes Corporation to transform the Seaport’s historic Tin Building into a dining destination.

The food mecca has struggled since its 2022 opening, but the festival could energize the neighborhood, according to Lee Brian Schrager, the festival’s founder.“I hope it will be as good for them as it will be for us,” he said.“A lot of people have never been there or they’ve just been once, so I hope this will be a good opportunity to reintroduce the Seaport.”The nabe is yet to see a long hoped-for boom.Hedge funder Bill Ackman’s Seaport Entertainment Group (SEG) recently sold 250 Water St., located around the corner from the Tin Building, for $150.5 million.

The sale marked a roughly $110 million loss on the property SEG bought in 2018.The group abandoned plans for a 27-story, multiuse tower in the face of strong community resistance.Compared to Brooklyn, the South Street Seaport is a more central location for restaurateurs, who told Side Dish there were simply too many logistical challenges to transporting their dishes to the borough for the festival last October.

Getting Manhattanites to cross the bridge for multiple events was also an obstacle, restaurateurs said.“We had moved to Brooklyn because we had outgrown our space — we had started 18 years ago in the Meatpacking District — and I didn’t want to use the Javits Center,” said Schrager, who is also the chief communication...