When motivated people have a good idea, it can take root and eventually blossom into a real-world phenomenon. The desires to help it grow and keep it alive are obvious, but knowing when to let up or change are less so.
That’s the dilemma a committee in Whitefish faced when looking at refreshing or revamping the popular Taste of Whitefish festival after 28 years.
Hosted by the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce, the Taste of Whitefish ran under the same model every fall: local restaurants and caterers would bring samples of their best dishes, and attendees could wander around and taste each sample as often as they wanted, all under one ticket price.
Kevin Gartland, executive director at the chamber, said the original Taste started three decades ago as not only a way to showcase local eateries, but also as a way to draw tourists to Whitefish during the slower, fall shoulder season.
But anymore, as summer continues to bleed into September and even October, the fall doesn’t drag. That means restaurants are still busy feeding visitors.
“Early September is no longer a weak time of year for us, our summer kind of extends into October,” Gartland said last week. “As a result we’ve got lots of folks that have participated in Taste of Whitefish saying they can’t because they’re too busy to spare the staff.”
A committee composed of chamber staff and others in the food and drink scene in Whitefish started thinking of new ideas to refresh the Taste last year, and began working in earnest in January this year to shift the Taste to its latest iteration, Feast Whitefish.
This new festival will be eight days of celebrating all aspects of food culture in Whitefish, and has shifted the festival from the fall to the spring, debuting this year from May 14-21.
“The spring shoulder season is a very weak time for us,” Gartland said. “We figure if we’re going to change things, we’re not going to change them a little bit, we’re going to change them a lot.”
The committee looked at food festivals in Portland, Oregon and Colorado ski towns Vail and Aspen for inspiration, and came up with the framework for Feast Whitefish.
Moving it to May catches the early summer crowd, but it also takes into consideration the Canadian long-weekend holiday that week, said Lauren Oscilowski, Feast event chair and owner of Spotted Bear Spirits.
“We’re trying to encourage [Canadians] to start coming back to the Flathead as well,” she said.
On May 14’s opening night, the party takes place on the 18th fairway atrium deck and patio at Grouse Mountain Lodge with the Distillers’ Fest, which takes the popular idea of microbrewery beer festivals and uses it to showcase distilleries in Montana.
The inaugural Distillers’ Fest will include seven spirit-makers, four from the Flathead and three from Missoula. Once the first festival is under their belt, Oscilowski said there are plans to expand it to include other spirit-related activities, like cocktail classes.
It runs from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and costs $25 to attend.
The rest of Feast Week (May 15-20) continues with a series of multi-chef collaboration dinners hosted at six of Whitefish’s top restaurants, including Café Kandahar, the Whitefish Lake Restaurant, Latitude 48, and the Boat Club.
These intimate, one-of-a-kind dinners will feature 15 chefs from Northwest Montana in their own and guest kitchens, allowing each chef to produce a gorgeous dish while also learning from one another.
Andy Blanton, executive chef and owner at Café Kandahar, said he worked on the committee to build these types of events, because they help showcase what restaurant chefs are capable of better than a festival like the Taste.
“A few years ago we opted not to do [The Taste] only because it just felt like we were giving a lot for not much in return,” Blanton said. “It just became this sort of carnival of an event that for me, personally, I didn’t feel that we were very well represented in that type of a setting.”
Collaborative dinners seem to be where food experiences are heading, he said, because when chefs work together to create one meal, it takes competition and ego largely out of the equation.
“I think the collaborative dinners are in a way the future of showing the possibilities of food and the connections that are around food,” Blanton said. “It really allows advancement on all levels because of the respect and knowledge. That’s not easy to do in the business that’s driven so much by egos. I think the collaborative element is the future of food in a way.”
Each collaborative dinner during Feast Week will feature a three-, four-, or five-course prix-fixe menu, paired with wines and Montana microbrews and spirits.
Gartland and Oscilowski said future Feasts will include other opportunities, such as a Food Truck Festival and potential cooking classes. The idea now is to become a regional draw each May for the food and wine presented here, which Blanton believes presents a unique opportunity for Whitefish due to its prevalence of locally owned or chef-owned restaurants.
“This is a really cool opportunity for us to move forward and to highlight Whitefish as a whole in terms of a food scene that really lacks the corporate chain restaurants,” he said.
For more information, visit www.feastwhitefish.com or call the Whitefish Chamber at 406-862-3501.