Coconut Grove Seafood Festival, Miami

The festival was dissapointing. I expected a lot of vendors selling a variety of seafood dishes to eat and samplers to taste, recipes, info and tips on how to handle and cook seafood etc. I saw only 3 vendors selling the same thing fried shrimp and mahi and only mahi was available from all vendors. Also expected to see info related to marine life, craft items made from shells. After 1 hour I was bored and left after stretching it to 2 hrs.

The food was too expensive. We got a parillada from the Argentinians and the meat was too tough and could not eat it. The funnel cake was $6.00 a bottle of water was $2. The seafood too expensive. Most of the local population probably cannot afford it. Another thing was the parking, $15 & $20.

I was very disappointed with the event. I thought it would be a seafood festival, but I only saw about 4 food stands related to seafood. Food was mostly ceviche and paella. The food that was sold and the seafood at the one and only seafood market were extremely overpriced. $5 per not fresh stone crab claw, $6 for 5 conch fritters that were mainly batter, $1 per baby shrimp. $8 for a lobster roll that barely had any lobster. Also, one of my biggest complains besides everything about the event and the food is that there was no indication of where to park. The only parking that seemed to be offered was across the street and it was $20. $20 for parking while I paid $8 for a ticket. Never again.

The VIP tickets were overpriced for only offering a little shade and a terribly long line for a small glass of refreshments/beer. The food was very pricy and we weren't able to sample as many of the dishes due to prices. Basically felt we paid $25 to enter a park and pay for pricy food. What we ate was very delicious, however I felt for being a festival we were not rewarded anything or given incentives to return to another one, or even visit the spots featured with no discount either