Here’s What You Need to Know About This Year’s Feastival
Now in its 9th year, Audi Feastival is getting a refresh.
Photo by Iluminada Photography
What’s cool about Audi Feastival is that it never really gets old. Nine years in, and the annual FringeArts fundraiser is as awesome as it was in year one, which is partly due to the nature of the event (a bunch of delicious food cooked up by some of the best chefs in the city paired with all sorts of performance art and, occasionally, fire jugglers). But it’s also because the minds behind the event never quit, always trying to outdo the festivities from the year before.
And this year is no different:
Feastival is scheduled for Septmeber 27th and La Peg, rain or shine. This usually means a sprawling indoor-outdoor party with all of the city’s best chefs representing their brands and restaurants. This year, however, they’re switching things up.
“Every year, the chef community has rallied around Feastival in support of FringeArts in a way that’s really remarkable,” says Feastival co-host Michael Solomonov, “For the 9th year, my co-host, Nick Elmi, and I wanted to push the creative envelope even further by challenging chefs to collaborate outside of their category and cuisine of expertise, to cook with their peers, to dream up something truly collaborative, and to use this as an opportunity to give guests an experience they won’t find anywhere else in Philly.”
So what does this mean? Well, this year, instead of each chef repping their respective restaurants, the chefs — all 60 of them — will represent the eclectic neighborhoods of Philadelphia and the cuisines largely associated with them. So chefs who are assigned West Philly will get to cook Caribbean, African and Indian inspired foods. Chefs assigned South Philly will go with Italian, or Cambodian, or Vietnamese, or Mexican. Each chef will be paired off with a teammate and, together, they’ll work on creating a dish that best represents them, their style of cooking, and the ‘hood they’ve been allotted.
“Attendees will get to see these neighborhoods come to life in an experiential way throughout the entire event,” says Feastival co-host Nick Elmi. “In honor of FringeArts’ dedication to performance art, we are ecstatic to incorporate live cooking elements that will bring the tastings to life in a memorable way.”
Neat, right?
We’ll let you know the chef-teams as soon as we find out for ourselves. General admission tickets are $300, with doors opening at 7 p.m. VIP tickets are $450, and with them, you’ll get in one hour before the general admission entry.
Be the first to know when these tickets go on sale by signing up at PhillyFEASTIVAL.com.
