Chefs, fire, and Texas pours return to Auditorium Shores for the fifteenth year.
Every November, Auditorium Shores stops being a jogging path along Lady Bird Lake and becomes Austin’s longest dinner table. This year that table turns fifteen. For three days the downtown lawn belongs to chefs, pitmasters, sommeliers, and anyone willing to walk it with an empty stomach and an open afternoon. Come hungry.
The Austin Food & Wine Festival returns Friday, November 6, through Sunday, November 8, at Auditorium Shores. Presented by C3 Presents — the Austin company behind Austin City Limits Music Festival and Lollapalooza, working here with chef Tim Love and restaurateur Jesse Herman — it is one of Texas’ most reliable arguments that this city eats as seriously as it plays. For a weekend the park fills with national names, the kitchens Austinites already fight for on a Saturday night, wine and spirits people who actually want to talk, and a skyline that makes a small plate feel like an occasion. Every ticket includes the food and the drinks. You have to be 21. You should come ready to wander.
Friday night starts off the water. Made In Texas takes the Long Center Terrace from 7 to 9:30 p.m. for a dine-around dedicated to the state’s people, cuisines, and ingredients. The brief is simple: chef-driven dishes, drinks built with the same care, and live music, all of it meant to bring Texas to life through flavor, sound, and spirits. Think terrace, not banquet hall. The evening is built into a VIP ticket and is also sold on its own, which makes it the right first pour if you want the weekend to start before the lawn even opens.
This year’s Made In Texas kitchen includes Esther Choi of Mokbar, Kevin Lee of MAHT, Andrew Zimmern of Passport Hospitality, Damon Cook of Uchi and Hai Hospitality, Amir Hajimaleki of Roya, Ian Lanphear of Isidore, Sarah McIntosh of épicerie, Alexa Mejia of Emmer & Rye, Alan Dale Nelson of Best Quality Daughter, Augusta Passow of Barley Swine and Odd Duck, Amanda Turner, and Brendan Yancy and Drew Ahumada of Austin Oyster Co. It is McIntosh’s first year cooking the festival, and she is exactly the kind of Austin name the weekend is built to hold.
“I’m so excited to be part of Austin Food + Wine Festival this year as a chef,” she says. “Getting to cook alongside so many incredible chefs/friends, connect with fellow food lovers, and be part of one of the best food weekends in Austin is going to be pretty damn fun. There’s something really special about bringing so many talented people together around food, and I’m looking forward to being part of the energy and hopefully sharing a few memorable bites along the way.”
Saturday morning belongs to anyone who would rather cook than watch. From 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on the Shores, Love hosts Hands-On Grilling, a pre-festival cookout sold only as an add-on to a festival ticket. Guests share a charcoal grill with a partner and build a meal while he works the line, offering the kind of pointers you actually remember the next time you light a fire at home.
Daytime gates open Saturday and Sunday at 1 p.m. and close at 5:30 p.m. VIP guests walk in at 12:30 through a dedicated lane. Those afternoons are the Grand Taste: signature bites from Austin restaurants, cooking demonstrations, guided tastings of wine, beer, and cocktails, and the Fire Pit, where food comes off the flame and the pitmasters are close enough to ask. The Showcase is built that way on purpose — longtime rooms next to newer ones — so the lawn reads like the city instead of a guest-chef circuit that could be happening anywhere.
The demo tent is stacked. Choi, an Iron Chef Season 1 finalist, is there. So is Richard Blais of Trail Blais, the Top Chef Season 8 winner; Lee, a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist; and Zimmern, a four-time James Beard Award winner. These are not staged cooking shows you watch from a distance and forget. They are closer to a working class: a few techniques, a few mistakes avoided, something you can take back to a home kitchen that does not look like theirs. FOOD & WINE contributing editor and sommelier Anthony Giglio is back on the beverage side, with guided tasting sessions from sommeliers, mixologists, winemakers, and brewmasters still being added. If the Grand Taste is where you eat, the tastings are where you learn why the glass in your hand belongs next to the plate.
The Fire Pit this year is curated by Ali Clem of la Barbecue, April Bloomfield and Chelsea Fadda of Pecan Square Cafe, Lorena Garcia of Chica Restaurants, Enma Lopez of Austin Beer Works, Tom Micklethwait of Micklethwait Barbecue, and Ana Liz Pulido of Ana Liz Taqueria. This is the corner of the festival that smells like itself from a hundred yards away — barbecue and whatever else they have over the coals, served hot, with the people cooking it still standing there. Stay for the smoke. That is half the point.
The Grand Taste roster is the city’s table in miniature: 2020 Market, Alteño, Barbacana, Bill’s Oyster, Butternubs, Casa Bianca, Cousin Louie, Cruzteca, Eberly, Ēma, Ensenada ATX, Ezov, Garrison, Geraldine’s, Honey Moon Spirit Lounge, Intero, Juliet Italian Kitchen, Kalimotxo, Lonesome Dove, Loro, Lutie’s, Mum Foods, P6, Parkside, Poeta, Poke Poke, Serenade, SITI, Skipjack Oyster, Summer on Music Lane at Hotel Magdalena, Tare, The Cavalier, The Corndog Co., The Peached Tortilla, Verbena, Yamas, and Yellow Ranger, with more still being added. A single afternoon gets you twenty-five-plus of those kitchens. A two-day pass opens the full field of fifty-plus restaurants, plus more than twenty-five wine, beer, and spirits makers.
The passes are built around how much of the weekend you want, not around a menu of add-on fees once you are inside. A VIP ticket is the whole map: Friday’s Made In Texas, Saturday and Sunday on the Shores, a thirty-minute head start at the gate, a dedicated VIP lane, and a lounge with extra bites and drinks, shaded seating, and premium restrooms. On the lawn that ticket also covers the chef demos, guided tastings, and the Fire Pit.
A Weekender is Saturday and Sunday on the Shores — the Grand Taste, the demos, the tastings, the Fire Pit — without Friday night. A Single Day Grand Taste is Saturday or Sunday on its own, still with the demos, the tastings, the Fire Pit, and those twenty-five-plus kitchens. Made In Texas can be purchased by itself for guests who want the Friday terrace without the lawn. Hands-On Grilling stacks onto any festival ticket for anyone who wants Love’s charcoal session before the gates open.
Tickets sell out. They do it every year. If the weekend is on your calendar, go to austinfoodandwinefestival.com/tickets and choose the pass that matches the days you can actually walk. Do it sooner rather than later. Follow @austinfoodwine on Instagram, X, and Facebook for names still landing.
Think of the tickets as different ways through the same party. VIP is the long weekend: a Friday terrace that feels like the toast, then both afternoons on the lake with a place to sit when you need it. The Weekender is the lawn at full strength, Saturday and Sunday, no Friday. A single day is the right call if you want one focused afternoon — enough time for the Fire Pit, one demo, and a serious run at the Grand Taste without trying to shake every hand. Made In Texas is the kickoff. Hands-On Grilling is the lab. All of them include what you eat and drink on site.
If you have only one afternoon, give the Fire Pit an early loop, catch one demo, then work the Grand Taste. If you have the weekend, use Saturday to roam and Sunday to go back to the three bites you cannot stop thinking about. Clear bags only. No chairs. No coolers. Ride-share or a downtown garage will treat you better than hunting a space on Riverside once the gates swell.
The ticket does more than feed you. The festival benefits the Texas Food & Wine Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering awareness and innovation in the Central Texas food and wine community through grants, educational programming, and events. A plate on the Shores is also a vote for the cooks, farmers, and makers still building what comes next.
Fifteen years in, this weekend is less a spectacle than a habit Austin has earned. Walk the lawn. Taste widely. Stand by the fire. Leave knowing the city’s table is still growing.
There’s something really special about bringing so many talented people together around food, and I’m looking forward to being part of that energy.
— Sarah McIntosh, chef/owner, épicerie