Festivals

Jonathan Waxman, the chef behind Barbuto in New York City and guest of honor at Life Is Beautiful, says that he was the inspiration behind the chef demos at the event, a concept he borrowed from his Music City Eats festival in Nashville. As far as the opening event, Grills & Guitars, he plans to roast a whole pig. "I think I've got my boys coming to do a pig. I have not heard from Bruce [Bromberg] yet whether we got the device I wanted to cook the pigs in, which are these caja chinas — these boxes from Miami — because you can't dig a hole in the casino floor and throw the pig in there. So we're going to kind of fake it and do it in these caja boxes, which work really well for a pig roast and it'll be a lot of fun and really neat." [USAT]