It was hard not to notice the porcini doughnuts. Groups of people were staggering around clutching platefuls of them. The fried dough-puffs, dusted with a coating of dried porcini salt and served with a raclette cheese dipping sauce, were all over Instagram.
Some people seemed to be going to Outside Lands, a summer music festival in Golden Gate Park, just to eat them.
One of the largest independent festivals in the country, this event attracts 200,000 people with two of San Francisco’s great loves: outdoor concerts and high-quality, obsessively prepared food. If hoovering a gourmet burger while hiking a dusty trail in search of the next set by Metallica seems incongruous, Outside Lands has managed to make it work. Think summer of love meets food porn.
Many credit the event with pioneering high-end eats in a down-and-dirty festival atmosphere. You might find concept waffles at Coachella or sushi at Glastonbury, but organizers and longtime attendees will tell you Outside Lands tried it first. Locals jokingly call it a food festival that also happens to feature some music.
“Food has never been an afterthought,” said Anna Weinberg, a well-known San Francisco restaurateur and curator of the festival’s food offering this year. “We want this to be a place where people can discover the best new food, just as they would discover the best new artists.”
San Francisco is an ideal laboratory for such an experiment. Ambitious chefs are happy to trial bold dishes from the back of a food truck, while affluent, middle-aged hippies milling around the VIP lounge wouldn’t blink at a $22 burger. In a city that calls itself the home of sourdough and craft beer, festival-goers are at ease with ingredients like pork belly, jackfruit and cold-brew coffee.
“It’s a very San Francisco thing,” said Evan Bloom, co-founder of Wise Sons, a Jewish delicatessen that’s had a spot at the festival for the last five years. “People have an expectation of quality. They want their waffle fries and pizza but they also want their lamb burgers and 15-hour slow-cooked ramen stock. People come here with a plan, a little tic-tac-toe board of what they want to eat.”
Bloom, who started volunteering for other food vendors at Outside Lands eight years ago, says doing festival food inspired him to open up a restaurant of his own. “This was definitely the first place, anywhere, to do gourmet food at a music festival. It’s always been a good group that takes food really seriously.”
For a young brand like his, which serves up hefty Reuben sandwiches and pastrami-loaded cheese fries, the festival is critical to business strategy. “Visibility is really important. There’s the potential to make good money, but beyond that we do it because it’s great marketing.”
Last weekend’s three-day bash – the festival’s 10th anniversary – featured 81 restaurants, more than 70 local wineries and breweries, a private four-course dinner with the celebrity chef Roy Choi, and a “GastroMagic” stage that brought together culinary artists and musical acts. In between sets by Lorde, Solange and The Who, concertgoers snacked gleefully on raw oysters, ice cream tacos and doughnut cheeseburgers (yes, that’s a cheeseburger sandwiched between two glazed doughnuts).
At a wine tasting beneath a canopy of eucalyptus, I met Danielle Maki and Janet Henson, two Californians who said the food was a major draw. “We’ve been coming here for six years. We come for the music but stay for the food,” Maki said.
“Every year the first thing we do is line up for a pizza from Del Popolo,” she explained, referring to one of the festival’s best-known food trucks. “I stood in line three different times the first year I discovered them. I got so hungry waiting that I made my husband bring me some chilaquiles.”
Is fine dining the way of the future for more music festivals? Looking around at tables piled high with prosciutto, the din of Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers booming in the distance, it was easy to picture. “We have a lot of friends who come here who are foodies,” Henson said over mouthfuls of blue cheese and pinot noir. “It’s a big highlight for them.”
