A Note to Chefs: The Dos and Don'ts of Food Festivals

Mac and cheese, burgers, and a big ole meatball with red sauce: comfort foods with refined flair are highly appreciated by hungry festivalgoers.

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Chefs love hybrids and wacky combinations, but the dish is only as awesome as it tastes. If the combo isn't totally convincing to our taste buds, no one really cares that you were the first to throw popcorn, oysters, corn bread, bacon, and barbecue sauce together.

Food festivals should be the land of amuse-bouches, aka bite-size and only requiring one hand to consume (as the other hand often holds a wineglass). Toothpicks, Chinese soup spoons, noodles swirled around a fork: these examples prove that bite-size is the right size.

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You know what food festivals don't have a surplus of? Knives. And you know what wooden, compostable forks can't do? Cut meat. Thanks for the generous portion, but it would have been better as a thin slice or cut into bite-size portions and served on a toothpick.

Shucks, any dish goes from uninspired to egg-cellent with a fried or poached egg (preferably with a runny yolk). And people squeal for bacon — in chocolate, pasta, burgers, pretty much all the time, always. So when in doubt, throw some bacon in there.

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There are some foods that just can't handle the heat, chaos, and long hours of a food festival. Two prime examples: croquettes and spinach. Croquettes are rarely freshly fried. Once the croquettes reach room temp, they are essentially balls of grease. Yuck. Avoid at all costs. In addition, spinach turns into brown muck quickly (like, in minutes) with bitter and sulfuric flavors. Just don't go there.

The most simple of dishes can oftentimes be the most memorable. Take this yellow cake, for instance. Sure it's unadorned, but its spongy and moist consistency reveals its worth. The lush, Italian-style buttercream frosting doesn’t form a crystallized sugar skin on the outside, and suddenly, you're wishing every cake could taste this good.

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If people aren't eating the food — chances are something is wrong with it. It could be lack of salt. Perhaps the bread component is now soggy. Maybe the cold thing is now warm, and the hot thing is now cold. Pay attention to the food, and make changes if necessary. Prepare enough dishes to satisfy the hungry crowd, but if the flies start taking bites before the people do, hold back! We don't want to consider how many trillions of microorganisms are growing on the beef tartar that is now room temperature.

The best bite of a food festival is the one that can be stashed to-go to satisfy midnight munchies later. Chefs and restaurants that offer personalized to-go mixes, like make-your-own granola, make an even more memorable impression after the festival has ended, when hunger strikes.

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