Food festivals offer a unique window into diverse cultures and traditions, encouraging you to indulge in unique cuisines and, occasionally, some bizarre culinary experiences. Here, adventurous foodies are given the opportunity to embrace the extraordinary and celebrate the ingenuity of global culinary traditions.
Explore these 11 lesser-known food festivals, ranging from quirky to downright shocking, on a journey that promises to amaze and intrigue. Whether a fan of cutthroat competition, interesting ingredients or eco-friendly eats, there's something for everyone.
Explaining the allure of unusual food festivals
Unusual food festivals hold a special charm that goes beyond the simple act of eating. Culturally and gastronomically unique, these festivals showcase local traditions and cultural practices, offering a glimpse into the soul of the community from which they originate. They reflect old customs, regional specialties and the distinctive spirit of the people that celebrate them.
These festivals also create a sense of unity and pride, bringing together communities of locals and visitors alike to preserve and promote culinary heritages. From food fights to arts, every festival has its own approach to experiencing the traditions, stories and shared joys that come with them. One bite at a time, you will go beyond just tasting exotic flavors. Are you ready to dive in?
A taste of tradition
Culturally rooted food festivals provide a window into the heritage and spirit of their locales. These events are more than just a celebration of food, they're also a testament to their communities' creative customs and collective identity.
Women react as they throw tomatoes at each other during the annual "Tomatina", tomato fight fiesta, in the village of Bunol near Valencia, Spain, Aug. 30, 2023.
La Tomatina de Buñol
Originating in 1945 in Buñol, this iconic festival is one of Spain's most famous cultural events. Held annually on the last Wednesday of August, La Tomatina draws thousands of visitors from around the globe to literally paint the town red. Participants engage in a thrilling tomato food fight, play tomato-themed games and enjoy the festive atmosphere of laughter, music and squishy tomatoes.
Noche de Rábanos
Noche de Rábanos celebrates the artistic potential of its namesake, the radish, in Oaxaca, Mexico. Dating back over two centuries, Noche de Rábanos brings together local artisans to showcase their creativity by carving intricate sculptures out of radishes. Transforming the town square into a gallery of radish art on Dec. 23 yearly, this festival features a contest for the best radish carvings to add an element of friendly competition, ultimately celebrating artistic expression and community spirit.
Chinchilla Melon Festival
Held in Chinchilla, Australia, this festival is melon mania. In February every other year, this festival takes over the town, turning it into a playground of melon hysteria, featuring quirky activities like melon skiing, melon bungee and other entertaining contests that highlight the versatility and fun of this juicy fruit. This homage to melons encourages joy, laughter and a touch of silliness, fostering a strong sense of community in everyone involved.
Culinary contests
These cook-offs highlight the thrilling and competitive potential of cooking, bringing out the best in culinary skills. Turning traditional dishes into gourmet masterpieces, these festivals foster a sense of community spirit and friendly rivalry.
Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship
Dedicated to the art of porridge making, this competition attracts porridge enthusiasts globally to Scotland to vie for the coveted title of World Porridge Champion. Every October, participants showcase the perfection of traditional recipes and the innovativeness of experimental ingredients to emphasize the versatility and significance of oats in Scottish cuisine. Judged on taste, texture and presentation, this festival celebrates the enduring appeal of porridge.
Cheese-Rolling Festival
The Cheese Rolling Festival in Gloucestershire, England is an adrenaline-filled event where participants chase a rolling cheese down the steep and slippery Cooper's Hill. This thrilling race has been a local tradition for centuries, attracting daredevils from around the world. Tumbling, sprinting and often falling down, the participant who makes it down the hill first wins the cheese in this spectacle of chaos, laughter and adventure held in May every year.
Spotlighting special ingredients
Some festivals are all about food. Celebrating unique and unusual ingredients, food-themed festivals are popular among both locals and tourists. From garlic ice cream to all things potato, here are some unique food festivals around the world.
Esperanza Pineda, center left, and Jennifer Smith, center right, sell locally-grown garlic at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, Calif., on July 24, 2004.
Gilroy Garlic Festival
The Gilroy Garlic Festival of California is a fragrant celebration of all things garlic held every July. Known as the garlic capital of the world, Gilroy hosts this annual event to showcase the versatility of garlic through cook-offs, tastings and demonstrations. From familiar favorites like garlic bread to questionable concoctions like garlic ice cream, this festival is a scrumptious and surprising event for all ages. The festival moved to Stockton, California, in 2022 and this year, has been rebranded the California Garlic Festival and will be held in Merced at the end of August.
Jaggery Festival
Celebrating the rich history and cultural significance of jaggery, a sugary ingredient made from sugarcane juice or palm sap. Visitors can experience demonstrations of traditional jaggery production methods and learn about the health benefits and uses of this natural sweetener. The Jaggery Festival not only preserves and promotes traditional sweet-making techniques but also fosters a sense of community and cultural pride.
Potato Festival
This spud-tacular event held every September in Blackfoot, Idaho is held to honor the humble potato and its significance to the local economy.
Known as the potato capital of the world, Blackfoot's Potato Festival features potato-themed activities including potato sack races, a potato parade and even a Miss Russet beauty pageant.
Delicious potato-based food offerings like gourmet totchos, live music and educational exhibits make this festival fun for everyone.
Celebrating sustainable eats
Promoting sustainability through the use of unconventional ingredients and eco-friendly practices, these festivals promote innovative and responsible eating. They embody the spirit of sustainability through their unique culinary offerings.
People dance to music at the so-called 7th annual World Testicle Cooking Championship on Aug. 28, 2010, in the village of Ozrem, south of Belgrade, Serbia. It's called "The World Testicle Cooking Championship," or "the Ball Cup."
World Testicle Cooking Championship
This bold, Serbian festival celebrates the culinary tradition of animal testicles, attracting chefs and adventurous eaters to showcase their skills in cooking with this unusual ingredient. Promoting the concept of nose-to-tail eating, this championship includes cooking competitions, tastings and inventive recipes to emphasize sustainability and respect for food resources. Held yearly at the end of August, this championship is a testament to culinary innovation and cultural traditions. There are also such festivals scattered across the U.S.
BugFest
BugFest, held in Raleigh, North Carolina, every September, is an educational and entertaining festival celebrating the interesting world of insects. Importantly, BugFest promotes environmental awareness and sustainability, highlighting the crucial role of insects in our ecosystem and teaching the benefits of entomophagy - the practice of eating insects. Featuring a variety of bug-themed activities, including educational exhibits, interactive displays, live insect demonstrations and insect-incorporated dish tastings, there is something for everyone.
Roadkill Cook-Off
A quirky and adventurous journey, this festival, held in Marlinton, West Virginia, attracts chefs who prepare dishes using animals commonly found as roadkill, such as squirrels, raccoons and possums. Featuring cooking competitions and tastings, this festival promotes sustainable eating and waste reduction, turning what might be considered waste into gourmet meals.
Head to the fests
Unusual food festivals around the world offer a window into diverse cultures and innovative culinary practices. From the playful chaos of La Tomatina to the sustainable focus of BugFest, each festival showcases a unique aspect of food and community. These festivals are more than just about tasting exotic flavors, they are an experience of shared joy and traditions.
Pack your bags and plan a trip around one of these festivals. Bring your appetite and get ready to explore the fascinating stories beyond these quirky gems. Whether you prefer competitive cook-offs, cultural celebrations or sustainable eating practices, there's a festival out there waiting to surprise and delight you.
Cicadas à la carte? Here's why it's so hard to get Americans to eat bugs
Cicadas à la carte? Here's why it's so hard to get Americans to eat bugs
Updated
When Cortni Borgerson thinks about the trillion or so periodical cicadas emerging from underground, she sees more than clumsily flying insects flitting from tree to tree in search of a mate. She sees lunch.
Some may find that idea revolting, a belief often, if unknowingly, steeped in colonialism and the notion that eating insects is "uncivilized." But Borgerson, an anthropologist at Montclair State University, is among those eager to change that perception. She's a big fan of dining on bugs of all kinds, but finds cicadas particularly appetizing. "It's one of the best American insects," she said.
Their texture, she said, is something like peeled shrimp, and their taste akin to what you'd experience "if a chicken nugget and a sunflower seed had a baby." She recommends first-timers cook them like any other meat and try them in tacos.
As Grist reports, Borgerson's not alone in her fascination with edible insects. In the lead-up to this spring's dual-brood emergence, a flurry of cicada recipes, sweet treats, and culinary odes have sung the bulky bugs' praises. The interest is part of a growing social movement in favor of alternative proteins among consumers increasingly demanding a more sustainable food system.
"They're this magical-looking insect that crawls up, that people are excited and interested in," she said. "People are more excited about eating it than they might be about other types of insects."
The buzz around this cicada emergence provides an opportunity to break down misguided stereotypes and misconceptions about eating insects, Borgerson said. If you ask her, the creatures are more than tasty. They're a sustainable alternative to carbon-intensive proteins like beef and an effective way of addressing rising rates of food insecurity.
"Some insects have an incredible opportunity, and a potential, to reduce our carbon footprint in a delicious, but sustainable, way," she said.
Roughly 30 percent of the world's population considers insects a delicacy or dietary staple, a practice that goes back millennia. A study published earlier this year found that over 3,000 ethnic groups across 128 countries eat 2,205 species of Insecta, with everything from caterpillars to locusts appearing in dishes of every description. These invertebrates are a rich source of protein, fat, and vitamins. The creatures are most commonly eaten by consumers in Asia, North America — predominantly Mexico, where people enjoy 450 varieties — and Africa.
The idea remains a novelty in the United States, where just six species are regularly consumed (crickets being the most popular). Consumer attitudes, based on old stigmas, remain a hurdle to broader acceptance.
Julie Lesnik, an anthropologist at Wayne State University who studies the Western bias toward eating things like beetles, called the "ick" response many Americans have toward the idea a cultural byproduct of colonization.
"Disgust is felt very viscerally and biologically," she said. "So to tell somebody their aversion to insects is cultural and not physiologically programmed is a difficult thing to wrap your head around, because you can feel your stomach turn, you can feel the gag reflex come up if you are disgusted by the idea of eating insects. But disgust is one of the few learned emotions. So we are disgusted by the things our culture tells us to be disgusted by."
Such a reaction also can be a sign of internalized prejudice, she said. Indigenous peoples throughout North America once consumed a variety of insects, a practice European colonists deemed "uncivilized" — a way to "other" non-white communities and cultural practices. "Is it racist? Yes, simply put," Lesnik said.
The racialized foundation of that ideology has garnered scrutiny in the wake of viral right wing claims that a shadowy global elite will make people eat insects. Politicized conspiracy theories — like the suggestion that Bill Gates will take away meat and force everyone to eat insects — are insidious misinformation that Joseph Yoon fights daily.
"The very notion of edible insects, I believe, has people think about the lowest denominator," said Yoon, the founder of Brooklyn Bugs and a chef advocate for the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. "It's for the apocalypse. It's for poor people. It's for marginalized communities in developing nations. And so the very notion of this creates a sense of fear, anger, resentment. Instead of putting insects in a silo because you don't understand … we can work together to provide solutions for our global food systems."
Eleven years ago, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization called bugs a promising alternative to conventional meat production. In the decade since, a surge of North American startups have launched to make insects into a primary food source for humans, an ingredient (flour is common), or a feedstock for cattle and pets. The market for such things in the United States is expected to hit $1.1 billion by 2033; globally, the figure is more than three times that.
Still, for an industry in its infancy, the viability of scaling insect protein into a legitimate climate solution remains a burning question, one Rachel Mazac has studied intently. Mazac, a sustainability researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, is among the scientists who have attempted to quantify the carbon footprint of producing things like crickets, mealworms, and black soldier flies on an industrial scale. So far, she's found that insects make "extremely efficient" use of land and water compared to conventional livestock. Although she acknowledges the dearth of data on the subject, Mazac thinks insects warrant further consideration as a feasible alternative to more common — and carbon-intensive — meats.
Not everyone sees insects as a climate solution, however. Matthew Hayek, an environmental researcher and assistant professor at New York University, co-authored a 2024 survey of more than 200 climate and agricultural scientists that showed widespread support for greater efforts by governments and the private sector to incentivize alternatives to meat and dairy. But he doesn't believe insects belong on the slate of urgent solutions. Among other things, he questions the environmental impact of feeding them to livestock, and whether the creatures can be raised and harvested humanely.
"It's a worthwhile area of investigation for fundamental science and research and development," he said. "It is not worthwhile as an actual climate solution at a market level for somebody to invest in a climate solution."
Jeffery Tomberlin, an entomologist at Texas A&M University and director of the Center for Environmental Sustainability through Insect Farming, doesn't buy that. He believes every possible alternative protein needs to be on the table because meeting the climate crisis requires reforming the global food system. "We should be looking at all options when we talk about how to be better stewards of our planet," he said. "We need to diversify as much as possible."
Doing that, however, will require consumers and policymakers to put aside old ideas and consider new possibilities. That, Tomberlin said, would prompt the kind of research and funding needed to "safely and efficiently" develop the processing and production practices needed to make insect protein a viable, scalable alternative to other meats. Only then will the idea of eating insects be more than a flurry of trendy headlines, and cicada tacos more than a fleeting novelty.
This story was produced by Grist and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.
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