Fri. Feb. 9

We knew Anthony Spinazzola only a little when we first started freelancing for the Boston Globe. He was wrapping up his career as a restaurant critic; we were beginning ours as a pop music critic. So we’ll cede the floor to his son Chris and his wife Marjorie Clapprood, when it comes to talking about “Tony Spin” and the Gala Festival of Food & Wine that holds his name.
    “He was very much loved, very different,” says Clapprood. “When he passed away, all the young up-and-comers who he’d invested a lot of time  and affection in - Todd English, Lydia Shire, Jasper White - came to Chris and Tony’s widow, Dorothy, and said ‘We’d love to do something to honor him.’ He invested time and talent. He really put Boston on the map for restaurants and California for its wineries.”
    So in 1986, the Gala was launched. It steam-rolled from there. This year’s event, the 22nd will be held Friday Feb. 9 at the Seaport World Trade Center. It's expected to draw nearly 5000 people at $200 a pop. Starting at 7:30, folks will be able to sample the wares of 130 premier restaurants and 90 wineries, many with the “famous” chef/owner or vintner in the house or at the grill. The money raised between the Gala and a smaller celebration on Thursday at Aujourd’hui should total $1 million. It will benefit various hunger relief organizations around town and support scholarships for inner-city kids entering culinary arts programs.
    Clapprood says the Boston tourism bureau told her the Gala, and other spin-offs held around the same time, bring  $50 million to the city. Chris – who, with his mother, just got the Silver Spoon Award for Humanitarian Service from industry trade Food Arts magazine – says this about his dad. “What I’ve heard is, because he actually worked in the business - he had a second job as a line cook at New England Oyster House and had been a waiter – they had a rare appreciation for him. (As a critic) he had a great deal of integrity. If a restaurant was horrible he would tend not to write about it rather than crucify it.” What his dad wouldn’t tolerate, says Chris, is indifference.
    You’ll see Clapprood and Chris Spinazzola at the the Anthony Spinazzola Foundation Gala Festival of Food & Wine, but don’t expect to find either eating. They’ll be working the crowd. They save dining for later, at an after-party or breakfast. You, on the other hand, will be pleasurably overwhelmed with choices. We know. We’ve been to a couple of these and it’s a sensory delight through and through. Music will be supplied by the MIT Jazz Ensemble.

200 Seaport Blvd., 781-344-4413 spinazzol.org