This weekend, June 28-30, is the Taste of Tacoma, the largest annual food festival in the South Sound. I wrote about the changes the festival has made this year, including healthier and lower priced options, the integration of food trucks, and The Taste Cooks!, a cooking stage featuring Tacoma chefs and food experts, hosted by Amanda Westbrooke of TV Tacoma.

I’ll be one of those folks on the cooking stage on Saturday, June 29 from 3-3:45. I’d love for you to come see me! I’ll be talking about Tacoma Foodie, my cooking blog, A Big Mouthful,  what it’s like to be a food writer, as well as how to shop the farmers market, and then doing a cooking demo with local ingredients from the farmers market. On the menu is a smoked salmon, asparagus and goat cheese pasta and a shaved zucchini salad.

Check out the full schedule of chef cooking demos, as well as the Chef Cook-Off! following my demo at 4 on Saturday. The contestants, Chef Hudson Slater of Maxwell’s, and Aura Mae, known as “The Kitchen Beautician”, will be cooking from mystery ingredients in a battle similar to Chopped or Iron Chef. Other demos include Tom Pantley of Toscanos, Gil Turturici of Boathouse 19, Kris Blondin of STINK, Geoffrey Yahn of Dirty Oscar’s Annex and more. It should be a good time.

I worked hand-in-hand with the organizers of the Taste of Tacoma this year to try to get the festival to be a little more Tacoma, a little more local. The changes they’ve made seem to be in the right direction. It’s not perfect yet by any means, but it’s good to see Tacoma restaurants be involved in the Taste Cooks! portion, as well as the healthier and lower priced items available from the vendors.

If you haven’t been to the Taste of Tacoma in the last few years, it’s worth a revisit. For more about the changes to the festival this year, read my article on NorthwestMilitary.com.

Hope to see you Saturday!

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  1. Trixy Dorn

    Hi there, thanks for the information. I was so bummed to miss this event. Was it filmed by chance?

    Thank you!