Taste

How the Great American Foodie Fest has diversified the scene

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Get your grub on at the Great American Foodie Fest April 28-May 1.
Photo: L.E. Baskow

The twice-a-year Great American Foodie Fest, a locally founded and produced event formerly known as the Las Vegas Foodie Fest, is back for its spring run this weekend, bringing carnival rides, a beer garden, eating competitions and more fun to align with the dozens of food trucks and cross-country vendors that make this long weekend super-tasty. As big as it seems, it’s actually bigger.

Created in 2012, the Great American Foodie Fest has already expanded into other cities. It’ll return for second events in both Arizona and San Diego, and debut next year in Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

Everywhere it goes, the idea is the same: Bringing fantastic foods you can’t get in your city, to your city. “We’re foodies ourselves. We watch TV and see the food trucks and vendors and even out-of-market restaurants on Travel Channel and Food Network and thought how awesome it would be if we could put together a festival out of all those foods in one local destination,” says Noel Casamiro, president and managing partner of GAFF LLC.

Sample food truck fare from other cities at the Great American Foodie Fest.

You may know the Foodie Fest as the event that first brought White Castle to Vegas, serving up the famous sliders to hungry festival eaters before the restaurant chain opened up shop on the Strip. Casamiro and his partners learned from that experience and expanded their operations in another way, acting as an incubator for independent restaurants and food trucks to test-market their concepts in new cities with the potential of collaborating to open a brick-and-mortar location. That’s how Las Vegas got Island Time Floats, the pineapple and Dole Whip dessert shop with locations at Bally’s Grand Bazaar Shops and at the Las Vegas South Premium Outlets. The collabo also resulted in the Chinatown-area Fukuburger restaurant, and the Foodie Fest team is currently working on another local Fuku spot—and on bringing California’s popular Jogasaki Sushi Burrito to Las Vegas in a permanent way.

Great American Foodie Fest April 28-May 1, Sunset Station, greatamericanfoodiefest.com.

Tags: Dining, Food
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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of editor-at-large at Las Vegas Weekly magazine. ...

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