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Andy Blanton, executive chef at Cafe Kandahar, prepares a meal. BEACON FILE PHOTO
A Taste Becomes a Feast
Annual Taste of White sh event transformed to Feast White sh, an eight-day festival in May
HEN MOTIVATED PEOPLE HAVE A
good idea, it can take root and eventu-
ally blossom into a real-world phenom- enon. 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 White sh faced when looking at refreshing or revamping the popular Taste of White sh festival after 28 years.
Hosted by the White sh Chamber of Commerce, the Taste of White sh 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 cham- ber, 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 White sh 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.
BY MOLLY PRIDDY
“Early September is no longer a weak time of year for us, our summer kind of extends into Octo- ber,” Gartland said last week. “As a result we’ve got lots of folks that have participated in Taste of White sh saying they can’t because they’re too busy to spare the sta .”
A committee composed of chamber sta and others in the food and drink scene in White sh 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 White sh.
This new festival will be eight days of celebrat- ing all aspects of food culture in White sh, 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 gure if we’re going to change things, we’re not going to change them a lit- tle 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 frame- work for Feast White sh.
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 rst festival is under their belt, Oscilowski said there are plans to expand it to include other spirit-related activities, like cocktail
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APRIL 27, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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