South Beach Wine and Food Festival

Each February, Miami Beach hosts one of the most prominent celebrity-chef food festivals in the United States. Since 2002, the South Beach Wine and Food Festival has built a reputation for pairing major culinary names with Miami's particular brand of glamour, running dozens of events across a single long weekend.

The format ranges widely — from large-scale tasting events featuring dozens of restaurants and wineries at once, to intimate hands-on dinners hosted by individual chefs. Held in partnership with a leading American culinary school, the festival has also become a significant fundraising event for hospitality-industry scholarships.

For Miami, the festival has become a fixture of the city's cultural calendar — a moment each winter when the worlds of fine dining, wine and Miami Beach's social scene collide in one long, well-fed weekend.