{"id":4959,"date":"2025-10-16T15:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T15:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/4959\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T15:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T15:20:07","slug":"rachael-ray-shares-what-visitors-can-expect-at-nyc-wine-food-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/4959\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachael Ray Shares What Visitors Can Expect at NYC Wine & Food Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legendary chef and former television host Rachael Ray<\/a> exclusively shared with Us Weekly why she prefers living in Tuscany over the Big Apple as of late.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband [John Cusimano<\/a>] loves being in New York. And I tell him, \u2018Hey, go as often as you like, stay as long as you want.\u2019 I come to New York and upstate New York when I have work, I prefer Italy,\u201d Ray, 57, told Us on Wednesday, October 15. \u201cIt\u2019s quiet. The dog is much happier. She hates New York City. Bella is not a New Yorker at all. So, for the dog\u2019s sake, I spend as much time [in Italy] as I can. She has a swimming pool and 66 hectares to run around on, and everything is very quiet, and the air is very fresh, and we have huge gardens and a vineyard and olive trees, and I just prefer that life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray will appear at the 18th annual New York Wine & Food Festival<\/a> on Friday, October 17, at 7:30 to 10 p.m. ET. She is cohosting the Blue Moon Burger Bash 2.0, presented by Pat LaFrieda Meats, with Brooklyn Beckham<\/a>. There will also be a special performance by DJ Cassidy. The festival began on Wednesday, October 15, and will run until Sunday, October 19, at the new Invesco QQQ Festival Campus in the historic Seaport in NYC\u2019s Lower Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Though Ray is cohosting a burger bash, she\u2019ll be bringing a hot dog, at the urging of NYCWFF founder Lee Schrager. Ray told Us that she is longtime friends with Schrager and does \u201cwhatever he says.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Related: 5 Celebs We Can\u2018t Wait to Eat With at the NYC Wine and Food Festival<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFall is officially here which means it\u2019s time for one of the most beloved and delicious New York City festivals. From Wednesday, October 15, to Sunday, October 19, the 18th annual New York City Wine & Food Festival will be held at the Seaport in Lower Manhattan. Our mouths are already watering just thinking about [\u2026]\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s my friend for over 20 years, and I do what he asks me to and he wanted hot dog representation at our burger bash,\u201d Ray said. \u201cI thought that\u2019s a fun idea to freshen things up after all these decades and gajillion shows between here and Miami, like, yeah, sure, let\u2019s have some fun with dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray told Us her secret to making a great dog \u2014 and good food in general \u2014 is to not sweat it too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that any food of any type should be taken too seriously. So have fun with it,\u201d Ray said. \u201cHave a sense of humor about it. Wrap your dogs in bacon and top them with all kinds of kooky stuff. And I just think there should be no rules when it comes to fun food or food that you eat with your hands, especially.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should take your life seriously and you should take appreciating work seriously, but you should never take yourself seriously. You certainly shouldn\u2019t take food seriously,\u201d Ray continued.<\/p>\n

Ray said that she and Schrager envisioned the burger bash together decades ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI [said], \u2018Wouldn\u2019t it be fun if we asked great chefs to come and put their efforts on a bun?\u2019 And, you know, demystify fine cuisine for people,\u201d Ray told Us. \u201cSo we had all of the biggest names in the world coming and making burgers \u2014 brought staff, wrote their recipes \u2014 and really since the get-go, it\u2019s been extremely competitive. People take this very seriously. Who gets the trophy? And who gets the bragging rights? And it\u2019s kind of hilarious, like, there\u2019s, you know, \u2018Rocky\u2019 belts and things that they\u2019ve earned over the years as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray told Us that it\u2019s \u201ceasy\u201d to keep the competition from getting too intense or cutthroat.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just appreciate everybody, and you treat them all with respect and compliment them. It\u2019s easy. It\u2019s just a party. This is not a big deal,\u201d Ray said. \u201cAlways raises money for charity, and it\u2019s a great way for people to eat and give back at the same time in various ways, but it\u2019s all about just having a party, having fun, there\u2019s nothing hard about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\"Sofia
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\t\t\t
\n Related: Sofia Vergara and Son Preview New York City Wine & Food Festival Event<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSof\u00eda Vergara and her son, Manolo Gonzalez Vergara, are leading a special event at the ultimate fall festival. Sof\u00eda, 53, and Manolo, 34, are partnering to host the Grand Tasting: Daytime Edition at the 18th annual New York City Wine & Food Festival. The festival runs from Wednesday, October 15, to Sunday, October 19, at [\u2026]\t\t<\/p>\n

Ray is passionate about giving back and has worked closely with the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America over the last few years after visiting Ukraine several times. She told Us that \u201cUkraine is literally in my soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband and I have personally given at least $2 million so far in support of all of the places where I teach and support the rehabilitation center Unbroken and the St. [Don] Bosco Center, which is an orphanage and a teaching center for young people,\u201d Ray said. \u201cI am not Ukrainian at all. Zero percent. I just was obsessed by watching, I watched too much news, and when I saw what was happening in this last phase of the war, you know, it\u2019s been going on for over a decade. Most people think it\u2019s three years. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s been a much longer struggle for the Ukrainian people. If you go back to Crimea, and when I was watching the suffering on television, I just became obsessed with, \u2018How can I get there and be of service in some way?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray told Us that she finds the resolve of the Ukrainian people to be \u201cinspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel strong and resolute, and I feel grateful for my life, for the way I get to live. I feel grateful to teach kids there, to support them, to hug them and to hold them and tell them, \u2018Hey, it\u2019s going to be OK,\u201d Ray said. \u201cI feel great [at] the rehabilitation center with people that don\u2019t have limbs anymore, showing them how to cook with one arm or from a wheelchair or go back to reliving some semblance of their former life. I feel great when I\u2019m in Ukraine, and I will do anything for the Ukrainian people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tThank You!<\/p>\n

You have successfully subscribed.<\/p>\n

The legendary Food Network host also told Us about how she and her husband Cusimano, 58, celebrated 20 years of marriage on September 24.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went to see some of our friends and [went] to our favorite restaurants in Florence and Rome,\u201d Ray said. \u201cWe live in Tuscany, so we can bop back and forth to both of those places pretty quickly. So we just \u2026 we were very chill this year. We had parties for 60 to 100 people over the decade, but this year we just went with us. Two nights in Florence, two nights in Rome.\u201d<\/p>\n

General tickets for the New York City Wine & Food Festival are available for purchase here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary chef and former television host Rachael Ray exclusively shared with Us Weekly why she prefers living in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[191,157,68,4909,3056,1070,9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-4959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-celebrity-news","tag-entertainment","tag-exclusive","tag-exclusive-interview","tag-festivals","tag-food","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}