Dominican Republic Food Festival Returns to Casa de Campo With Michael Mina, 8 Chefs, and Dinner Under the Stars

The Casa de Campo Food & Wine Festival returns to Casa de Campo Resort & Villas in the Dominican Republic Oct. 9-10, bringing Michael Mina, eight featured chefs and a Dinner Under the Stars to La Romana.

The Casa de Campo Food & Wine Festival is coming back to Casa de Campo Resort & Villas in La Romana, with two days of tastings, chef demonstrations and special events led by names including Michael Mina, Hubert Keller and Joe Isidori. The Oct. 9-10 festival is expected to draw more than 3,000 attendees, with programming built around eight chefs and more than 30 food, wine and spirits exhibitors.

It’s the fourth edition of the festival, and one of its centerpieces will be the Dinner Under the Stars at Minitas Beach Club, headlined by Top Chef finalist Adam Pawlak. Casa de Campo is currently offering a festival package from $650 per person, per night, valid for stays from Oct. 9-11.

The event adds another major weekend to a resort that has increasingly built its calendar around food, golf, fashion and other destination events. Casa de Campo’s 7,000 acres give the festival room to extend well beyond a conventional tasting hall, from the Marina Riverside Center to the beach and the wider resort.

The festival comes during a busy period for the La Romana resort, which recently completed a $15 million transformation of Teeth of the Dog, its best-known Pete Dye golf course.

Michael Mina Joins the Casa de Campo Lineup

The biggest new culinary name this time is Michael Mina, the award-winning chef and founder of the Mina Group, whose restaurant portfolio has helped make him one of the most prominent American chefs of the last two decades.

Mina joins two familiar faces at the festival. Hubert Keller is returning for a fourth appearance, while Joe Isidori, founder of Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beer, is coming back for his second.

The resort is also highlighting Dominican chef Gabriel Tejada Núñez as part of the program, adding a local component to a weekend otherwise built around an international roster.

Casa de Campo says the two-day program will include live cooking demonstrations, tastings and sessions with chefs and winemakers inside the Grand Tasting Pavilion at the Marina Riverside Center. The resort’s current festival page lists eight chefs in total along with more than 30 exhibitors.

Dinner Under the Stars Returns to Minitas Beach

The Saturday program ends at Minitas Beach Club, where Adam Pawlak will lead the festival’s Dinner Under the Stars.

The dinner is designed as a more intimate counterpoint to the larger tasting program, with a multi-course menu paired with wines in an open-air beachfront setting.

Pawlak, a Top Chef finalist and restaurateur, is known for a contemporary approach to Midwestern cooking. His appearance gives the weekend a distinct closing event rather than ending with the Grand Tasting Pavilion alone.

The festival package currently offered by Casa de Campo includes access for two people to the Grand Tasting Pavilion on both days as well as two places at the Dinner Under the Stars on Oct. 10.

Why Casa de Campo Works for a Food Weekend

Casa de Campo has 315 guest rooms and suites, along with a large collection of private villas spread across its 7,000-acre grounds. Every room and villa comes with a four-passenger golf cart, which matters at a resort where the marina, beach, golf courses and Altos de Chavón occupy different corners of the property.

The resort also has eight international restaurants, two food trucks and seven bars and lounges, according to its current accommodation information. That existing food-and-beverage footprint gives the festival a natural extension once the formal tastings are over.

You could spend part of the weekend at the Grand Tasting Pavilion, head back toward Minitas Beach and then make an evening of the marina or Altos de Chavón.

Casa de Campo’s scale also means the trip does not have to revolve exclusively around the festival. The property has 63 holes of golf across Teeth of the Dog, Dye Fore and The Links, all designed by Pete Dye.

Teeth of the Dog reopened earlier this year after its extensive restoration, giving golfers another reason to build an extra day or two around the festival weekend. The course remains the signature golf experience at Casa de Campo, with several holes running directly beside the Caribbean Sea.

The resort also has a 250-slip marina, an equestrian center, a racquet center and a spa, along with Altos de Chavón, the hilltop village overlooking the Chavón River.

That range is one reason Casa de Campo has increasingly worked as the setting for standalone destination events. The resort hosted its inaugural fashion week in June and has also developed a Cigars in Paradise festival built around cigars, rum and golf.

A Bigger Culinary Weekend in the Dominican Republic

The festival arrives as the Dominican Republic continues to deepen the range of experiences attached to its resort destinations.

Punta Cana remains the country’s largest tourism center, but La Romana offers a different kind of trip, with Casa de Campo operating as a resort community rather than a single hotel building.

Food is becoming a larger part of that identity.

The Casa de Campo festival combines visiting chefs with Dominican talent and places those events inside a property where guests can move between the marina, Minitas Beach, golf courses and Altos de Chavón over the course of the same weekend.

The Grand Tasting Pavilion will host the main programming on Friday, Oct. 9 and Saturday, Oct. 10. Saturday will then move into the closing Dinner Under the Stars at Minitas Beach Club.

Raúl de Molina will return as host of the festival, continuing a role he has held in previous editions.

Casa de Campo President Andrés Pichardo Rosenberg described the event as a celebration of both global culinary talent and Dominican heritage, while the resort is positioning this edition as its largest yet.

The numbers support the ambition: more than 3,000 attendees across two days, eight chefs and more than 30 exhibitors, all inside one of the Dominican Republic’s largest luxury resorts.

What It Costs and When to Go

Casa de Campo’s dedicated festival offer starts at $650 per person, per night and is valid from Oct. 9 through Oct. 11. The package includes accommodations, two passes to the Grand Tasting Pavilion for both festival days and two places at the Dinner Under the Stars.

October also gives you the option of turning the festival into a longer La Romana stay, especially if you want to add golf or a day around Minitas Beach.

The festival itself takes place Oct. 9-10, with the resort package extending through Oct. 11. That leaves enough room to treat the weekend as more than a food event: two days with Michael Mina, Hubert Keller, Joe Isidori and the wider chef lineup, followed by one more day inside Casa de Campo’s 7,000-acre Dominican Republic retreat.