Chautauquans fill Bestor Plaza at lunchtime during the Chautauqua Institution Food Festival Aug. 23, 2018.
JULIA WEBER
Assistant Editor
This weekend marks the kickoff of the two-week Chautauqua Institution Food Festival.
The festival will include guest appearances from celebrity chefs Nyesha Arrington and Darian Bryan, themed culinary experiences designed to align with lectures, events and other programming, tasting events and more. It is intended to align with the themes of Weeks Eight and Nine, which are “The Future of Food: Climate, Technology and the Next Agricultural Evolution” and “The Importance of Gathering: A Collaboration with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival,” respectively.
Director of Business Development Sam Nelson said ahead of the festival, he is particularly excited to display Chautauqua County through its culinary presence.
“There’s so much great culinary talent inside this county that we really want to showcase,” Nelson said.
Prior iterations of the food festival have existed, and Nelson said a main consideration this year was to think about how to further evolve the festival.
“We decided to try to schedule an event each day that fit in that afternoon or evening time where there’s not anything happening [in] the Amphitheater, nothing happening at the Hall of Philosophy …” Nelson said. “There’s people that want to see the local talent, there’s people that want to see something new and exciting — local or otherwise — something they don’t have. How do we do that?”
Nelson said the food festival aims to present a mix of programming that has both national and local presence, as well as events that bring something new for Chautauquans to experience.
Project Manager Will Griffith said during the planning process, it was important to both him and Nelson that the food festival be accessible to everyone.
“… Given our local community and making it more accessible for them, everything we’ve priced, we’ve priced (it) to make that a possibility for our local community to be a part of,” he said.
In Week Eight, Chautauqua will host a “Battle of the Bites” with four competing local chefs and a guest judge in a competition to determine the best meatball. Chefs from The White Inn, Dina’s, Andriaccio’s Restaurant and Sandee’s Catering, Bakery & Deli will be represented in the competition. Week Nine’s “Battle of the Bites” continues with what Nelson described as an “Athenaeum homecoming,” in which all competing chefs are former executive chefs at the hotel who are now working in other restaurants, with the goal of determining the best slider among the competitors.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Nelson said. “Throughout their time, they’ve overlapped (at the Athenaeum), they know each other. There’s a little bit of rivalry there already; over time, some of them have worked together, so it’s really exciting.”
Wednesdays of each week will showcase Chautauqua County cuisine through the Institution’s “Taste of Chautauqua” events. The food festival will also include craft beverage tasting events, during which Chautauquans can sample craft beers, wines and artisanal spirits, and will host Masters Series Masterclasses featuring mezcal and whiskey distillers. The Institution will also host Stark Coffee Enterprises, a coffee company based in Erie, Pennsylvania.
“We want to start off with community. Food brings people together; it’s about storytelling, just a way for us to come together, and Chautauqua’s about coming together, right? We come together and we sit on our porches, talk about all the things,” Nelson said. “My favorite part of any summer is getting together with friends, having one of those meals where you talk a little too long, have great food and you have wine. So, creating one of those experiences to start each week.”
Nelson said each week will start off with an event designed to build community and shared experience for Chautauquans; Week Eight welcomes a barbecue catered by Smokin’ Dick’s BBQ, and Week Nine follows soon after with a farm-to-table dinner hosted by 3 C’s Catering. Both of these events, Nelson said, are followed by a food-focused film at Chautauqua Cinema.
“We’ve had these incredible moments along the way getting to work with these chefs, both local and regional,” Nelson said. “It’s been so much fun.”
Ahead of the festival, Nelson said he is most excited that the Institution has built a food festival that supplements a day at Chautauqua rather than inhibits it.
“This is not just a food festival,” he said. “This is, ‘I can still have my morning lecture. I can then have these incredible lunches, and then I can go to the Hall of Philosophy, and then I can come back and check out this super cool event or this Masters Series that’s happening for the day, and then I can go about my evening entertainment, the things I normally do.’”
