Business & Tech
LA Chefs Relish 'The Taste' to Come
The Labor Day event, dubbed by the LA Times as "a four-day culinary spectacular," will feature cooking demonstrations, tastings and panel discussions.
Foodies all over town are gearing up for The Taste, a Los Angeles-wide celebration of gourmet delight.
Hosted by the LA Times and Food & Wine magazine, the event, which benefits LA-area charities, will highlight cooking and mixology demonstrations, as well as panel discussions and food and wine tastings. More than 20,000 people are expected to attend the festival, taking place in nearby Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and downtown Los Angeles from Sept. 2-5.
West Hollywood's very own and restaurant will be featuring their bites, alongside Culver City’s Akasha, Ford’s Filling Station and L’Epicerie Market; Westwood’s Napa Valley Grille; and Venice’s The Tasting Kitchen.
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Celebrated chefs across LA County will be present at anticipated event, including Roy Choi, who has been credited with starting the gourmet food truck movement back in 2008 and putting Korean BBQ tacos on the map with his Kogi food trucks. He now runs four trucks and aficionados are willing to stand in long lines for one of his Korean-Mexican fusions.
“We believed in something so much, we made it happen," Choi told Patch at the Montage Beverly Hills' preview event last week. "We weren’t afraid of ridicule. We put ourselves out there and went for it.”
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When he was getting his business going, Choi said he would park in front of popular Hollywood nightclubs, willing to put up with rejection and the naysayers in order to get his food noticed.
Choi will be hosting one of the nine signature events at The Taste, serving up tacos at the Taco Tequila Tryst on Sept. 3 at Paramount Studios.
Another notable is Candace Nelson, founder and pastry chef of Sprinkles Cupcakes and a judge on the Food Network's Cupcake Wars, who will be sharing her recipe for strawberry cupcakes at the Picnic in the Hills event, hosted by celebrity chef and TV personality Giada De Laurentiis on Sept. 5 at the Beverly Hilton.
"It's the quintessential taste of summer," Nelson said of the all-natural cupcake that uses fresh, pureed strawberries. "We could all use one last taste before summer leaves us for good this year.”
Plot out your Taste experience by taking a look at the complete list of participating restaurants. Purchase tickets here.
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