Shirley Chung, Tobias Dorzon and More Superstar Chefs Celebrate New Chapters at South Beach Wine & Food Festival |
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Shirley Chung, Tobias Dorzon and More Superstar Chefs Celebrate New Chapters at South Beach Wine & Food Festival
At the festival's 25th anniversary, comeback stories, new restaurants and next acts took center stage alongside the food.
The South Beach Wine & Food Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary over the weekend with a cavalcade of Food Network superstars and other A-list culinary talent. As always, it was a weekend of delicious food, copious alcohol and fans swooning over their favorite cooking-competition stars, who happily soaked up the love. It was also a weekend about rebirth, renewal and next acts.
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“For South Beach this year, I get to represent my new restaurant that I just opened in Dallas, which is Night Rooster,” chef Shirley Chung told Observer on Friday, 10 hours before the Antonia Lofaso-led team of Chung, Stephanie Izard, Tobias Dorzon, Joe Sasto and Jonathon Sawyer won the festival’s Tournament of Champions Live event. “When I saw the banners at the festival, you should have seen me laugh, knowing that I’m back. I’m really back.”
It was a remarkable moment for Chung, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 tongue cancer in 2024 and is now in remission. Two years ago, she wondered if she was staring down the end of her life. She wondered if she would ever properly taste food or cook in a restaurant again. And now here she was, serving lu rou pork belly baos on the beach, mugging for photos with fans, dancing and headbanging on stage with her chef friends at a raucous event hosted by Guy Fieri.
“Nothing is stopping me now,” Chung, who won Food Network’s inaugural season of Tournament of Champions in 2025, told us earlier in the day. “I have a lot more opportunities coming up. I’m living fearlessly. I’m not saying no. I just want to live my full life and experience everything. I’m probably going to be even more extreme than before. Nothing’s holding me back.”
There were a lot of celebrity chefs reveling and holding nothing back on Friday night.
“You ready to get schmaltzy?” chef Eric Greenspan screamed at the Tournament of Champions Live crowd as he served schmaltzy grilled salami sandwiches with his own New School American cheese. “We’re about to get fucking schmaltzy.”
Then the DJ played “Jump Around,” and Greenspan started doing the Running Man. He was clearly here to throw down as he gave guests a glimpse into the not-so-distant future.
Greenspan recently left the Tesla Diner to focus on opening his forthcoming Jewish deli, Mish, in Los Angeles this spring. Friday night’s event was the first public preview of Mish, and Greenspan was in a festive mood.
“Mish is my dream project,” Greenspan, who has been thinking about opening this deli for almost a decade, told Observer. “It’s my life’s goal. I mean, look, I extracted 99 percent of the dopamine that I was going to extract from the Tesla Diner project in the first three weeks. And after that, it was time to do this.”
The theme of the weekend, in many ways, was new beginnings. Dorzon, who is running Maryland’s Huncho House again after recovering from being shot 11 times in a 2024 armed robbery, beamed as he stood on stage alongside Chung. Earlier in the day at Bistro Collins inside Loews Miami Beach, rapper Ja Rule (who was in Miami to perform at the festival’s Grand Tasting Village) showed off his bartending skills as he poured his terrific new honey-infused Amber & Opal whiskey. Later on Friday night, Kwame Onwuachi hosted the Las’ Lap Link Up event with Nina Compton and served curry mussel toast as a preview of Maroon, the Caribbean steakhouse he’s working to open at the Sahara casino-resort in Las Vegas this spring.
New power couple Bobby Flay and Brooke Williamson made the rounds, starting with a private opening party at the W South Beach, where going to get a drink at the bar in the back meant walking past chefs like Chung, Greenspan, Izard, Michael and Bryan Voltaggio, Chris Oh, Eric Adjepong, Aaron May, Burt Bakman, Michael White, Tim Love, Mattia Agazzi and Todd English.
It was that kind of star-studded weekend all over South Beach as chefs bounced around to events and their favorite restaurants. We joined Chung for a casual lunch at legendary Cuban restaurant Puerto Sagua on Friday. It turned into an impromptu Food Network meetup because Kevin Lee, Shota Nakajima, Nini Nguyen and Leah Cohen had also decided to visit Puerto Sagua. Many visiting chefs, including Chung, Greenspan, May, Izard and Mei Lin, also put on bibs to eat at the iconic Joe’s Stone Crab over the weekend.
This was a weekend where everyone was eating well. Our favorite bites included chef Danny Grant’s Eight Bar burger and its accompanying creamy Szechuan pasta salad at Thursday night’s Burger Bash; Wan’s chef Alex Kuk’s traditional hot & sour soup at Thursday night’s Asian Night Market hosted by Jet Tila and Aarti Sequeira; Native chef Nyesha Arrington’s buttermilk fried chicken sandwich at Tournament of Champions Live; Jamaica Kitchen chef Anson Chin’s jerk pork and Kween Patty’s chef Daniel Lai’s wagyu/Scotch bonnet patties at Las’ Lap Link Up; and Lumpia Bros chef David Dualan’s pancit at the Grand Tasting Village.
This was a milestone year for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. But in many ways, it feels like things are only getting started for this festival and the chefs who come here to cook, party, see their besties, meet their fans and be reminded of the resilience of human beings.
“It’s all my friends here, and this is one of the happiest moments of my last two years,” Chung said. “I’m ready to do so much more.”
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