Each year come February, the food and beverage industry’s best and brightest convene in Miami Beach for The Food Network’s South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Foodies from every corner flock to join them for four days of guzzling, gastronomy and pants-loosening.

One of the weekend’s, well, best event, is the SOBEWFF’s Best of the Best held at the iconic Fontainebleau hotel, where 47 of the nation’s best restaurants serve up samples of their signature dishes.

Fontainebleau Executive Chef Thomas Connell let Chat Chow TV in on his managerial style, and explained just how major this mouthwatering SOBEWFF experience is and what exactly those fortunate event attendees are in for.

“We’re very lucky to be able to host [this event] because truly, to me, this is one of the, you know, not to use the pun, it’s the best of the best,” Connell gushes. “It’s really the best of the Food and Wine Festival in my opinion.”

“We bring together 82 wineries and 47 chefs from all around the world that all come together. […] We partner up every chef with two wineries so we have a couple of different wines to balance with the product that they are serving, and it’s a great flow throughout the night. People go around and get interaction with the chefs, the chefs are all there cooking and it’s really a very poised and educated group.”

It makes sense that powerhouse Fontainebleau plays host for an event of this caliber. The famous hotel contains some of Miami’s most notable restaurants, including the four-diamond-rated Hakkasan, Gotham Steak and Scarpetta.

Check out the video above to see how this award-winning, mega meal-making venue pumps out the perfect plate every time (hint: there are 4 miles of underground food and spirit storage involved, including a chocolate room). Then, if you’ve got tix, find us at the event — we’ll be the ones stuffing our faces.