Vegas Uncork’d by Bon Appetit celebrated its 10th anniversary with two dozen events taking over the city from April 28 to May 1. The program included events large and small, from an intimate private dinner at Nobu for just eight people (with a ticket price around $1,000) to the massive Grand Tasting event at Caesars Palace, which drew nearly 3,000 guests to sample 50-plus dishes set against the backdrop of the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis.
Although Bon Appetit’s name covered event signage—and enticed guests to travel to town to take part—the magazine doesn’t actually own the event. Instead, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority conceptualized the food festival a decade ago and owns it. The magazine produces it, and hotels like Caesars (the only one to have been on board for all 10 years of the program) as well as the Venetian/Palazzo are partners.
“The whole celebrity chef thing kicked in in Vegas when Wolfgang Puck brought the first celebrity chef restaurant [Spago] to town,” says authority spokeswoman Courtney Fitzgerald. “People looked at Wolfgang like, ‘What are you doing? Restaurants are just to feed gamblers, in and out.’ But then other chefs started to follow when he became successful—and [when that happened] we wanted to create an event that would celebrate the maturity of the culinary scene in Vegas.”
Then the convention and visitors authority sought a strategic partner. “Back when we were looking to create this event, we wanted a really great media partner that had amazing credibility in the food world. Bon Appetit came back with a very intriguing proposal, which included them not only covering but producing the event for us,” Fitzgerald says. “They have amazing relationships with chefs. They have the credibility and the authority in the culinary world.”
So the convention authority dreamed up the idea for its own version of a food festival—which would be unique from other events in that category for its access to celebrity chefs in personalized way. An example of that approach from this year’s event was an event at Caesars Palace in which about 50 attendees interacted with chef Gordon Ramsay, who talked to them about the food they were eating in his eponymous restaurant at Caesars. At a typical food festival, Fitzgerald says, “You get to see [celeb chefs] walk a carpet and taste a bite in a massive food environment. We wanted to create a more personalized immersive experience that [attendees] can’t get other places.”
This year for the first time, Uncork’d included events that were not on the Strip, including expanded programming downtown. A restaurant crawl, for instance, showcased multiple eateries downtown as part of a food tour. Each Uncork’d event is individually ticketed, so guests can build their own itineraries.
Uncork’d’s attendance, typically between 4,000 and 5,000 attendees, is unlikely to grow bigger—by design, according to Fitzgerals. “One of the great things about the festival is the intimacy and intimate access to the chefs,” she says.
