Utah Food Fest is back at the Natural History Museum of Utah this weekend.
The weekend-long festival celebrates Utah’s food culture and history, and will have foodies and culinary experts all gathered in the same place. Utah Food Fest runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
What to expect at Utah Food Fest
Attendees can taste the delicious flavors from Caputo’s Market & Deli, Beehive Cheese Company, Cache Toffee, Salsa Del Diablo and La Casa de la Empanada SLC, along with many other vendors offering up tasty treats.
Expert-led workshops will take place throughout the event where guests can learn how to “craft custom seasonings, dip a perfect caramel apple or whip up weeds into delicious meals,” according to the release.
Foraging and cooking with plants
Chef and foraging expert Megan Bartley is leading a workshop on foraging and cooking your own food using wild plants. She focuses her presentation on plants you can find along the Wasatch Front — the plants she mentions can be found readily available in your own front yard.
She will be talking about three plants:
- Dandelions
- Purslane
- Dwarf mallow
“You’ll look at weeds in your yard in a completely new light,” Bartley said.
Bartley began foraging when she lived in southern Utah and was pleasantly surprised by how many plants we see all the time are actually edible.
Some of her work was developed to show in the exhibit “Nature All Around Us” that is now a traveling exhibition around the country.
“Sourcing food yourself is really rewarding,” Bartley said. “Although you’re not planting the foods yourself and tending to them, it’s still a connection with the food itself and with the land from which you’re sourcing it. That is pretty remarkable.”
People who attend her workshop will receive actual recipes that go with the plants she talks about foraging in the presentation. She wants to instill confidence in attendees that they can forage and cook their own food from the plants they forage.
“I think that people can really gain a lot from that connection with the land, that connection with their food, harvesting it yourself, taking the time to learn about the food itself, how nutritious it is, what pairs well with it, ... developing fun recipes,” Bartley said.
Festival information
If attendees purchase a workshop, it also includes admission into the museum. Some workshops are filling up, so guests are encouraged to prebook admission and workshops if there’s an event they would really like to attend.
“Food has always been an incredible unifier, bringing people together even before Utah became a state, and it’s still a delicious way to gather together community,” said Jason Cryan, NHMU’s Sarah B. George Executive Director, per a release. “Yet this festival is about more than contemporary flavors and guests will have the opportunity to learn about the region’s rich history of food cultivation dating back to first peoples.”
Utah Food Festival Partners include the following:
- AmsterDam Delicious
- Artigliano Group
- Bad Boy Burger Co.
- Beehive Cheese Company BLLC
- Cache Toffee
- Caffe Ibis Coffee Roasters
- Caputo’s Market & Deli
- Chunky Cookies, LLC
- Drift Chocolates
- Grandma Sandino’s
- The Farmhouse at Saccos LLC
- Frog Bench Farms
- Fry Me to the Moon
- Han’s Kombucha
- JulieAnn Caramels
- Kimmie’s Kandies
- La Casa de la Empanada SLC
- Must Be Nuts
- Raw Eddy’s Superfood Snacks
- Salsa Del Diablo
- The Salted Roots
- Tea Grotto
- Wasatch Organics/White Lake Farms Honey
- Zoque LLC