Boston Local Food Festival dishes out delicious, sustainable eats

Banner Food & Travel Sponsored by Meet Boston

The Boston Local Food Festival is preparing to come back for its 15th year to serve the city with its many offerings.

Kerry Kokkinogenis, local food program manager at the Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts, said the festival has come a long way from its small beginnings. Now, she said, the food festival is the largest, local-only food event for the city and the region, as far as she knows.

“The Boston Local Food Festival is local-only food, so that’s predominantly the Boston area, Massachusetts, but also throughout New England. There are established businesses that you might recognize and a whole lot of stuff that’s new or new to you,” she said.

The Boston Local Food Festival will happen on Sunday, Sept. 14 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The festival will host food vendors from almost every inhabited continent serving up fresh food and drinks. Visitors can also find packaged foods, farms and fisheries, a raw oyster bar and more.

They also have the Family Fun Zone, where families can participate together in food activities, such as the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries’ crab smash and tasting.

Kokkinogenis said the festival will also host two demonstration kitchens where community members can watch as chefs make meals. 

Last year’s Boston Local Food Festival brought food vendors and food lovers together for a delicious day in celebration of local food and drink. PHOTO: TOM KLEIN

“One of them hosts a seafood cooking competition, where the two different chefs are given a surprise seafood ingredient. Last year (the surprise ingredient) was a monkfish. And then, with that and some money to shop from the farms at the festival, they put together a meal and it’s judged by a small panel and the people watching it to taste it, if they’re so inclined,” she said. 

The festival also has two big, shared tents where smaller vendors have the choice to join or participate. One highlights western Massachusetts businesses like Truffles by Tarah and Wisemouth Teas. The other tent will have smaller vendors from all over, like Crème de Liqueur, a locally distilled alcohol-infused ice cream company.

“Food is an opportunity-entrepreneurship industry,” said Kokkinogenis. “It’s an area where people from all over the world have something to bring — metaphorically and literally — to the table and it’s important. …This festival is an opportunity to celebrate that and for everybody to get to join in that joy.”

Kokkinogenis also said that with the many changes happening on the federal level in this current political climate, the local food system is going to be what sustains us on a long-term basis and we need to become connected to it.

“We need to be aware of it and be able to support it, because when you don’t know if [the product of a meat processing company] is going to give you salmonella poisoning or some industrial-farmed greens are going to poison you because they’ve gotten rid of the oversight, they’ve gotten rid of the reporting, they’ve gotten rid of all the incentives,” she said. “Knowing that you can go to your local farmers, you can go to the farmers market, you can get it through the mobile markets. It’s important to know that you can get food that is safe for your family.” 

Kokkinogenis encourages community members to come and enjoy the festival, especially if they have never attended.

“Coming to the festival is essentially free. …You get there and you can just walk on through,” she said. “There is so much going on, so many things to try, and so many new food ideas, even if you don’t end up trying the liver pâté. … Seeing how it’s made and having that idea planted is such an interesting opportunity. There’s something for everybody and a lot of somethings for almost everybody.”