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Taste Talks Brings LA’s Greatest Culinary Voices Together for One Weekend

What to know about the city's biggest culinary symposium to date

Food from a previous Taste Talks event
Taste Talks
Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

Have you heard of Taste Talks? The ongoing food and culture series stems from New York, but had dropped in some pretty fun events over the years into Los Angeles as well. Now they’re going whole hog with a stuffed weekend of food festivals, panels, and discussions across Los Angeles. Here’s what to expect.

First, you should know that you’ll have to buy tickets. There are different levels available for various events (more on that in a moment), but essentially they scale between single-ticket parties like a weekend All-Star BBQ in Silver Lake and others, or you can jump up a level to grab conference invites or an all-in pass that gets you access to the whole weekend. Now, these aren’t cheap necessarily — the barbecue is the least expensive at $49 plus fees, while the whole shebang pass runs a cool $495.

So what do you get for that kind of cash? Access to everyone from Jon Shook to Evan Kleiman to Curtis Stone to Wes Avila, with Brooke Williamson, Michael Fiorelli, and plenty more names thrown in for good measure. You’ll also get a variety of food to try, either at Roy Choi’s Commissary for a brunch party or that weekend barbecue at Mack Sennett Studios, where chefs across the spectrum will be collab’ing with each other and a handful of musicians to put interesting one-off dishes together.

Wes Avila of Guerrilla Tacos
Taste Talks

The main moment though is the Taste Talks Conference, running 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. That’s where pants will convene to talk about everything from surviving restaurant economics to the globalization of dining. You’ll also get vegan demos, curry-making sessions, and roundtables on the state of food media in Los Angeles at the moment.

Taste Talks Los Angeles kicks off tomorrow, November 4, with an opening party at the Hotel Normandie. From there you’ll find Saturday’s full slate of events, Sunday’s barbecue, and a closing party at Mack Sennett Studios as hosted by the guys behind Badmaash. If you’re interested, tickets can be purchased here.