Bacon festivals celebrating all things bacon give fanatics the chance to taste a variety of pork belly delicacies.
Going global
Bacon festivals have even gone the international route. The Blue Ribbon organizers are planning to have their first Japan Bacon Festival on Nov. 3, which is Japan Culture Day, at Kitaguchi Historical Park, and Yamanashi Prefecture Foundation Park in Kofu, Japan. The cross-cultural baconfest will offer attendees both American-style and Japanese-style bacon, pork-inspired cuisine by 20 local restaurants, beverages, food demonstrations, a chef exchange, live music, bacon-filled contests – and international bacon fellowship. Part of the proceeds will support local charities.
“Kofu is our sister city,” Reynolds notes. “Fifteen people from Japan came to Iowa for our festival. Then we had a 5 a.m. meeting with our friends in Japan via Skype to plan the Japanese festival. Des Moines and Kofu became sister cities through a historic event. In 1959, Japan was devastated by two huge typhoons, and Iowa’s response was to airlift 36 breeding hogs and 100,000 bushels of corn to help with the recovery effort. It was called the Iowa Hog Lift and set the stage for Iowa and Yamanashi becoming Sister States, opening markets and agriculture cooperation between the US and Japan,” he explains.
Last month, the weekend after Labor Day, Baconfest 2017, featuring bacon, beer and bands, drew large crowds to the Dell’Osso Family Farm in Lathrop, California, about 55 miles east of San Francisco, for the second year of festivities. Stephen Peters, marketing manager for Sunnyvalley Smoked Meats, the top sponsor of the bacon festival in nearby Manteca, California, said 40,000 people attended the festival last year, and he was expecting even more this year. Beer is a big part of the event, with last year Coors selling the most kegs for any event in Northern California.
“Our MC this year is celebrity Chef Jeff Mauro, who hosts several shows on the Food Network, including The Sandwich King and The Kitchen. We’re having events this year at Baconfest 2017 like cooking contests for both amateurs and professionals, cooking demonstrations, 20 microbreweries on site, a car show, arts and crafts, and lots of activities for kids, including rides,” he says. “For this year’s event, we’ve delivered 22,000 lbs. of bacon from Sunnyvalley Smoked Meats to the Dell’Osso farm for the festival.”
The bacon-eating contest featured an appearance by Joey Chestnut, ranked first in the world by “Major League Eating.” “After all, we’re celebrating America’s mightiest meat,” Peters declares. “There are also pig races and 20 bacon-inspired food vendors.”
There are more bacon festivals to come: like the Keystone Bacon & Bourbon Festival in Colorado; the Ozarks Fest, featuring bacon, bourbon and beer; the Wellington Bacon and Bourbon Festival, near West Palm Beach, Florida; and Nashville Bacon, Eggs & Kegs.
And a big one: the Chicago Baconfest in April 2018. Over the years, this festival has contributed $400,000 and one million meals to the Chicago Greater Food Depository.
