Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Eat!Vancouver - The Everything Food and Cooking Festival


The 6th annual Eat!Vancouver festival took place this past weekend, and like everyother food nerd in this city, I was there to get drunk take part in the festivities.

Truth be told, I'd never heard of the festival before and only found out about it a few days prior. Despite the beautiful warm weather, a boyfriend at work, and all known friends MIA, I grabbed a non-perisable food item for a discount at the door and wandered over to BC Place Stadium early Saturday morning.

Aside from a the media touted Food Network Celebrity Chef Demo stage, I didn't quite know what to expect other than standard convention stuff. And standard convention stuff there was. In bounds.

Many of the booths I had seen at another convention I atteneded earlier this year, and many of the booths seemed oddly out of place (I'm not sure why New Zealand Air was there, ditto for the barley derived cat litter company). There was all the things anyone should expect to see at a convention such as this - big food companies promoting whatever is meant to be popular, fad-dy, instant, or simply edible and marketable in the coming year... small food companies promoting whatever is meant to be unique, different, homemade or pretentious (the spicy chocolate wine sauce I tasted was *weird*)... vitamin and health supplement companies with aggressive sales people trying to convince anyone who will listen why their products work... various special interest for and non profit groups looking for recruits... the list goes on.

Despite the crowds, the bad samples of bad food (instant curry! instant pizza! vitamin water! liquid greens!) I managed to find the right booths, talk to the right people, and actually have a pretty good time.


I met a representative from Farm Folk/City Folk - an organization that I was already familiar with - who talked me into signing up for a membership. I had an incredibly long conversation with a represenative from edible Vancouver magazine, about taking a soft approach to local food issues and labelling 'foodie types', about resources available to those wishing to explore local food, and about writing about local food. I spoke with a girl from the SPCA about their Farm Certification Progam, the costs of becoming organic certified, and the options for farmers stuck in the dead zone of converting to organic. And, I bought a copy of GreenZebra.

Due to not having cable I was completely uninterested in the offerings of the celebrity chef stage, and the food pavillion didn't interest me either. Both of these items seem to be the main selling point of the festival for a lot of people, so unfortunately I cannot offer a complete review. It was incredibly interesting though. I do wish that it hadn't been as crowded - many of the booth operators I wanted to speak to were understandably too busy to have lengthly or in-depth conversations. As much as I was intersted in the event being a networking and learning experience for myself, I realise it is as much a money making and brand promoting event for many of the booths.

My favorite part - as with any convention - was the swag! The swag wasn't as good and plentiful as it was at The Wellness Show I attended a few months ago, but it was still awesome.



If nothing else, I got a lot of inspiration about things to blog about. There is a wealth of material in the pamphlets that I've get to go through, and I've already added a few companies and organizations websites to my bookmarks to go through more thoroughly at a later date. That and the free Zhu Jiang beer glass totally made the whole trip worth it.

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2 comments:

Restaurant Brugge said...

thanks 4 sharing with us these type of post

Agricultural Commodity Exports said...

Nice info. Your experience is very good & we learned lot from it. Thanks for sharing this post with us.