But wait: Reclaim your sense of adventure, and go east, young man (or young woman)! Because this is exactly what you’d be doing if you had tickets to the Martha’s Vineyard Food and Wine Festival this weekend, October 15–18, held on the Cape Cod island. This is where presidents vacation and sustainable fishing and farming traditions are as much a part of the seascape as quiet sandy beaches, Rosa Ragusa, and quaint clapboard villages. MORE: The No. 1 Green Veggie to Always Buy Organic Not often does a food and wine festival come along that catches the attention of EatClean, but this one is different. With its focus on sustainability and a smattering of “small-batch” experiences—not large-scale, pay-to-purge events—the MVF&WF, as locals acronym it (along with editors who find it too onerous to write out), features unique events and intimate pop-up dinners with guest chefs and local culinary talent who create with food and grapes harvested largely from the island itself. Because, in addition to a thriving seafood trade and tourism industry, the Vineyard is actually replete with vineyards (imagine!) and small, local farms, both of which enable the MVF&WF to truly call itself farm-to-table—or sea-to-stomach, boat-to-belly, grape-to-glug, cru-to-cockeyed…You get the point. So how authentic is the farm-to-table we’re talking about here? On Friday, October 16, the festival kicks off with an event called “Crudo, Fresh Off the Boat,” when you can taste, well, crudo fresh off the boat, accompanied by a handpicked selection of Sauv Blancs from a local wine expert. If raw fish isn’t your thing, find it fried at the subsequent “Crispy and Salty” (as Cape Cod is the original and best place to eat fried seafood in the country, although this editor is biased) or in another regional standout—chowder—at the separate Chowder Run. MORE: Is Indoor Vertical Farming the Future of Food? While champagne is served at the former and local beer at the later, the night officially begins in true Cape Cod–style at the Fisherman’s Widow Cocktail hour. From there, after you’ve had enough artisan rum and properly reenacted pacing the widow’s walk while looking out to sea for your lost lover, you can sit down for dinner in someone’s private island home (yes) or otherwise charming seaside inn with a small group of other attendees and some of the best chefs and winemakers in the US: Chef Sarah Simmons of New York City’s City Grit culinary salon and Birds and Bubbles fame, the James Beard Award–nominated Chef Duane Nutter of Atlanta’s One Flew South, Joseph Carr of Dylan’s Ghost Winery renown, etcetera and etcetera. And that’s just Friday. Other unique events include a grand tasting of local fare in oceanside Edgartown, a sampling of four varieties of local oysters in a slurp-and-sip wine sit-down called “Oh Shucks!,” and a dinner hosted in a private home by Mary Cleaver, one of the leading pioneers in sustainability and founder of New York City’s Cleaver Company, a 30-year-old catering outpost that, along with its restaurant The Green Table, started pushing farm-to-table, organic food long before everyone else did. There’s much more, too, but we’re thinking that it’s time to stop dreaming at your desk and thoroughly start procrastinating by seeing if you can hop one of those awesome direct flights to Martha’s Vineyard Airport. (Just refrain from coming back with the “MV” decal for your Beamer unless a ferryman actually slaps one on your car.)
