LA’s Next Gigantic Food Festival Features Famous Names and Lasts an Entire Month

Los Angeles is about to get its first truly massive, multi-day food festival, thanks to the Los Angeles Times. Dubbed the Food Bowl, the month-long event weaves speaking engagements and live demonstrations together with lots and lots of eating.

The full slate of scheduled events is up now on the LA Food Bowl site, with the starting gun going off May 1 and the race lasting all of May. The most compelling part for anyone purely interested in the eats is the Night Market, an evening-only open air bazaar featuring dozens of famous LA restaurant names spread across Grand Park in Downtown.

The large event will span the culinary gamut from Thai to Japanese to El Salvadorean, with lots of contemporary California cuisine to boot, and runs from Wednesday May 10 to Sunday May 14. Most nights kick off at 5 p.m. and go until 10 p.m. or later, with an earlier weekend opening starting at 3 p.m.

Other featured events tackle one-off themes at places all over the city, from a Bollywood night at Akasha in Culver City to a full dinner party at places like the upcoming Cosa Buona in Echo Park and a family meal recreation at Hinoki + The Bird. Workshops will include butchering a whole pig at Electric City Butcher in Santa Ana and a Downtown food-centric bike tour.

Elizabeth Daniels

Overall, the most interesting stuff is likely to be the panels, which features talks on food policy, the legend of Julia Child, tackling community hunger issues, and a bunch more, as well as film screenings across the city. There’s a lot to tackle in the food world right now, from tipping to access to the increasingly outdated notion of “cheap eats,” and bringing in big global names like Wolfgang Puck and Magnus Nilsson to dissect them in their own way is not only smart for the Times, it’s good for the dining public as well.

The LA Times Food Bowl launches May 1 and runs through May 31. You can find ticketing info and everything else at the LA Food Bowl site.

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