The idea for Gastrofest came into this world in a likely place. A place where ideas are born and have been born for generations of ideas. It was a coffee shop. Bold Bean in Riverside, to be precise.

I was there to meet Cari Sánchez-Potter to talk about Cooking with Intuition. The cookbook hadn’t been printed yet, but I wanted to include it in my holiday gift suggestion article: “local books for foodies.” The topic wandered as we talked, and it became as much as about the cookbook as it was about the amazing growth of our food scene.

Around us, the unsteady sounds of conversation ebbed and flowed, marked by the sibilant hiss of espresso construction. Cari said something. Humans, when they don’t quite hear something, try to fill in the blanks. I thought I heard “Something big is coming but I can’t talk about it.” Now, this was nowhere near what she said. But it is what I thought she said. Instantly, my mind leapt to possibilities. What it came up with was Gastrofest.

Jacksonville’s food scene is comparable to, say, Charleston’s. But Charleston gets featured in the glossies, their dishes gracing magazine covers. We rarely do. Why not?

A few years ago, I wouldn’t have made the comparison. Today things are different. Our chefs are doing incredible things on their plates. We have fantastic local providers. National coverage of our food scene is starting to show up more often in forums like magazines and even, CNN. Still, the national press had been slow to acknowledge what was happening here.

Cities like Charleston, Austin and Atlanta had something we didn’t: a major food festival celebrating their food. If we had a festival like that, we could showcase what we had to offer on a national level. Why weren’t we already doing that? The answer was simple: until now, we weren’t ready for it. That doesn’t mean we still don’t have plenty of room for progression. Of course we do; every place does. But Gastrofest will not only show us off—it’ll up our game.

–Erin Thursby, Gastrofest’s Executive Director