The Fort Worth Food & Wine Festival will showcase the many culinary talents of Fort Worth during its four-day spring celebration next year, March 27-30, 2014. The event plans to infuse historic venues and homegrown flavor with celebrated local chefs, culinary professionals, and wine makers into twenty events throughout the weekend. The festival honors the distinctive nature of Fort Worth cooking, food, beverage and culinary traditions and aims to bring national attention to the Fort Worth food scene.

I recently chatted with Festival front man, Reata’s Assistant General Manager and president of the Tarrant County Restaurant Association, Russell Kirkpatrick to get his thoughts on the highly anticipated event.

I see that you all have a great line up for the festival. How’d this all come about?

RK: Right now we have out executive committee of business leaders, restauranteurs and chefs whose input we really trust to really shape the festival. The event is running Thursday – Sunday. The kickoff event is at Billy Bobs on Thursday night. As we open it up throughout the weekend, we’ve got some wine dinners around the city. We definitely hope to bring in chefs from outside the city as well, be it Dallas, San Antonio, Houston or Austin. You know, 5 years down the road, is it possible to have 75-percent of the chefs come from outside the DFW area? Yes, but we understand that this first year a lot of those chefs won’t be in the Fort Worth area. The goal for us for the Fort Worth residents to have the Tim Love and Jon Bonnell, Lanny Lancarte and those are chefs that you can go to their restaurant any night. It would also be great to bring in some Dallas talent like Rathbun, Pyles or Fearing, then locals are able to eat their food with out driving all the way to Dallas and we can have a couple of things for Dallas residents as well. We’re able to showcase our best restaurants like Lonesome Dove or Reata or Grace. You come for the weekend and you’re able to eat the food from restaurants in Fort Worth!

Why has it taken so darn long for something like this to come along?

RK: (Laughs) And you know, I get that question a lot. It took us a couple years to really nail some things down. I took part in the Buffalo Gap Food and Wine summit and after a few years of doing that, I decided it was time for Fort Worth to get in the mix. There’s obviously competition between the two cities, but when it comes to great restaurants, amazing winemakers and venues…the DFW metroplex is blessed with some of the best.

You all have so much talent out there, how will FWFWF attendees be able to pack in all the sights?

RK: We are going to do three grand tastings. One on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday during the day. Friday night will be our big tasting around the newly renovated Sundance Square. It’s a beautiful area where we will have cooking demos, retail and merchants. Let’s say you’ve got the grand tasting and cooking demos on Saturday or a winemakers dinner on Sunday… There’s so much to do. We want to highlight as many parts of the city as possible. Sundance, The Stockyards, there are so many parts of the city that might not normally be seen and we want to showcase those areas. We MIGHT do mimosas at the Modern Art Museum or a Sip and Stroll on Magnolia Avenue.

The first ever food truck park in North Texas came out of Fort Worth. Any chance that could be incorporated into the weekend as well? 

RK: We are actively pursuing an avenue for which to highlight that community. We want to be creative with it and we know it’s a different demographic. You’ve got so many different kinds of demos when talking about food & wine. There’s the high-end crowd that wants to partake in a wine dinner at Del Friscos and then you have the food truck connoisseur and craft beer enthusiast. The programming goal around the festival is to keep it simple while really proving that we are a city full of culinary talents.

Any events in the mix leading up to the FWFWF? 

RK: We’ve got a few things up our sleeves that I’m not at liberty to talk about just quite yet. Possibly a sneak peak party in the Fall when tickets go on sale…