Midwest Comfort Food Festival

media release: Organizers are pleased to announce the inaugural Midwest Comfort Food Festival to be held on the grounds of Seven Acre Dairy Company in Paoli, Wisconsin. The festival celebrates Midwestern comfort food, in all its various forms and iterations.

“We dreamed up the idea of the Midwest Comfort Food Festival because of our fascination with the idea of ‘comfort food.’ What is it? What does it mean to different people of different backgrounds in the Midwest? Even more: What does it mean to locate comfort food here--a place that likely has representative comfort foods in the popular imagination that may or may not be reflected in the reality of Midwestern food culture?” asked festival organizers Ben Hunter and Kyle Kiepert, chefs at Seven Acre Dairy Company. 

The Midwest Comfort Food Festival’s main event is the Festival held on Saturday, June 24, 11AM-3PM on the Seven Acre grounds. The Festival will showcase a celebrated line up of Madison-area chefs, who, along with Vang, will be preparing dishes that reflect what comfort food is to them. These chefs include: Dan Cornelius (Yowela Farms), Yusuf Bin-Rella, (Trade Roots), David Rodriguez (Taco Local), Francesca Hong and Matt Morris (Morris Ramen), and Ben Hunter and Kyle Kiepert (Seven Acre). A dessert will be provided by Seven Acre. Guests will enjoy booths from local artists and music from Down from the Hills Bluegrass band.  

“To me, the idea of comfort food is universal, though its meaning shifts across culture, class, and place, especially here in the Midwest. I can’t wait to cook at the Midwest Comfort Food Festival and to shine light on what comfort food means to me and to who I am as a Latino in the Midwest,” says David Rodriguez, owner of Taco Local on Williamson Street in Madison. 

Tickets for the Saturday event are $60 + tax + Eventbrite fees. The ticket includes entrance to the event and a comfort food dish from all six chefs + dessert.  There will be two cash bars where alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages will be available for purchase as well as a retail area where Midwest Comfort Food Festival Art and merchandise will be available for sale. 

A kick-off dinner by James Beard-nominated Yia Vang, owner and chef of Union Hmong Kitchen in Minneapolis, takes place on June 23; find more info here.