Six days of food, wine and music, sounds like a recipe for a great week to me! Celebrating it’s 34th year, the Scottsdale Culinary Festival’s “Great Arizona Picnic” is the place to indulge your taste-buds and give back to the community. (100% of net proceeds go to local arts programs). I have just returned from this event (which takes place every year in April) with the highlights. Next year if you find yourself in The Phoenix area and you have always wanted to try several different restaurants but haven’t had the time, “The Picnic” is the perfect opportunity to sample fare from over 50 food and beverage exhibitors. Food and beverages are sold separately but the portions are small (so you can try lots of different things) and the prices are reasonable).
The Arizona Bartender Guild did “Cocktail Culture” demonstrations and there was something called the Tequila Experience. For beer lovers, a sampling of over 200 beers to complement your snacks was the place to cool off and listen to music. The cute miniature beer mugs were on ropes and worn around the neck.
The Family Zone and live entertainment on multiple stages made for a fantastic foodie family fun day which I completely recommend.
Looks like future food bloggers!
The highlight for me was two special ticketed events. The first was Adam Richman of the Travel Channel’s Man v. Food. He is all about comfort food, has a vast knowledge of mouth-watering local specialties across the country and shared some entertaining food travel stories. His new series is called “Adam Richman’s Best Sandwich in America”.
A beautiful day in a beautiful place with friends and family eating, drinking, laughing … did I mention eating?