It’s festival season in Los Angeles — and apparently that’s a thing! My gym has been touting all month that it’s time to “get fit for Coachella and Stagecoach.” But what about getting fit for food festivals? Okay, probably not what they have in mind. But you’ll find plenty of foodie events happening all over LA this month and through the spring.
Simply diVine Food Festival at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery – it’s been a foodie month!
Last week, Kevin and I were lucky enough to be invited as VIP guests to Foodie Con in downtown LA. This foodie extravaganza is positioned as the ‘Comic Con’ for foodies. I mean, geeking out over food is essentially what we do. So it seemed like a perfect match! Check out our top takeaways from the festival. And yes, you’ll soon be on board as much as we were with the boozy ice cream!
5. Getting schooled – foodie lectures
Get ready to learn – lectures, cooking demos and other talks at Foodie Con are held throughout the day
The 2-day festival features lectures on the latest food trends and all things foodie. We found these talks as a nice way to break up all the snacking. And a chance to re-live our college days… except this time we didn’t nap. Okay, maybe Kevin did close his eyes for a few seconds.
The educational part of Foodie Con – where you can pick up a few books or 20.
4. Instagram-worthy moments
The photogenic dumplings from Workaholic USA
What would a good food festival be without some Instagram-worthy moments that say, “Yes everyone on social media… we’re really at a food event!” The food court at Foodie Con had several of these Internet-famous stops such as Workaholic USA and their handcrafted artisan Korean dumplings. And if you can’t wait for next year’s Foodie Con, you can find them every Sunday at Smorgasburg LA along with that other Internet foodie sensation known as the raindrop cake (aka the slimy dessert that is supposed to look like a drop of water, but sort of reminds me of a breast implant!).
The raindrop cake – looks cool, but not exactly to our tastes!
3. Interactive pop-up discos and blow up fruit
Kevin is having way too much fun with that blow up orange
The picture pretty much says it all — Foodie Con had several stations set up where you could snap photos of yourself with fake food. Or with no food at all, like at their silent disco where you could put on earphones and dance like nobody is watching… or judging. Though clearly we were!
Peeking through the inner tubes lining the silent disco dance floor at Foodie Con
2. Boozy ice cream – yes, that’s a thing!
Boozy ice cream – why hasn’t this caught on?
Part of our VIP entrance included access to the alcohol section. It’s not even slightly shocking, that somehow Kevin spotted the ice cream table first. But my first thought, why are they selling ice cream with the beer? Wait a second… you can drink and eat your ice cream too! All this courtesy of The Boozy Creamery, a local company based out of Huntington Beach.
Samples of the alcohol-infused vanilla ice cream from the Boozy Creamery.
Now don’t get us wrong, we probably would love regular ice cream just as much. But there was just something silly and fun about having ice cream infused with liquor. And just think, it could be a good portion control technique — where you pass out halfway through the pint! But the alcohol area clearly had more than just ice cream. We sampled plenty of local wine as well as samples from one of our favorite downtown LA Arts District spots: Angel Cities Brewery.
1. And what makes a food festival so great? Free samples, obviously!
We can’t pass up a free sample — and clearly, we’re not the only ones. We’ve been to a Costco on Sunday and have seen near mob situations over pigs in a blanket. Foodie Con had no shortage of free goodies with some of our top picks coming from igourmet.com with their cheese plates, Eat.Love.Yoga. and their yummy brownies and cookies and Del Real Foods with their Mexican meals that can be found at local grocery stores.
Oh my god, we were completely full by the end. And the festival season has only begun! It looks like I’ll need to hit up the gym after all!
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