The annual summer Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colo., has been canceled. But the New York City Wine and Food Festival, a four-day fall fund-raiser that sprawls across the city in restaurants and event spaces? Not so fast. Lee Schrager, the organizer and founder is going digital with it, starting this week, and still hopes the festival will return in October. (He was able to slip in the South Beach edition in Miami just under the wire in February.) Now with the gala atmosphere at tastings, lunches, cocktail gatherings and dinners falling victim to social distancing, the festival has added NYCWFF at Home, with sessions, mainly classes, featuring food celebrities and chefs a few times a week. Participants, up to 300 per session, pay $20 each and can join via Zoom. There will even be a 15-minute Q. and A. at the end of each event. All the money goes to the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Employee Relief Fund. First up on Monday at 2:30 p.m. will be Neil Patrick Harris cooking with his husband, David Burtka; Wednesday will feature Alex Guarnaschelli and her daughter. Plans are for it to continue for months to come.
NYCWFF at Home, nycwff.org/athome.
