Taste of the Nation Los Angeles Review

By Samantha Dockser

On Sunday June 5^th, foodies came together in Culver City, joining forces and taste buds, to celebrate the annual Taste of the Nation Los Angeles food festival. It was an afternoon of delicious sips and tastes for a cause. The festival is celebrated nation wide and successfully works to raise money to end childhood hunger with No Kid Hungry.

This year’s festival featured the best of the LA food scene. With close to 70 participating chefs, restaurants, and beverages and just as many silent auction donors, this was a day not to be missed.

If you follow my posts, then you already know I have a sweet tooth. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of my favorite bites of the day were dessert. Hinoki & the Bird, lead by Chef Brandon Kida, served up Miso Donuts with Honey Caramel. This two-bite treat was so sweet and unlike any other donut I’ve recently tried.

Another Taste of the Nation Los Angeles favorite came in the form of mini desserts. Cake Monkey and Chef Lisa Olin provided the VIP attendees with not one, but two incredible bites. The first was an Inside Out S’mores. They took two housemade graham crackers and filled them with chocolate ganache and topped it all off with toasted marshmallow. Their other dessert was a Sticky Toffee Blondie made with brown butter pecan, sticky toffee glaze, and sea salt. Both were heavenly and left me hoping for seconds.

Valerie Confections run by Chef Valerie Gordon stepped it up by offering not one, not two, but three desserts! Their station was filled with Mole Brownies, Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies, and slices of Strawberry Rhubarb Slab Pie. This meant there was literally something for everyone.

The Portland to LA ice cream shop, Salt & Straw, owned by Kim Malek and Chef Tyler Malek, delighted festival attendees with four flavor options. They offered a few incredible standards. But for the brave foodie among us, they offered their famous Goat Cheese ice cream.

And of course that was just the dessert. Taste of the Nation Los Angeles featured a fair amount of delicious BBQ and meats. Serious Barbecue and Adam Perry Lang served up BBQ Beef with pickles, onions, and saltines. This meat practically melted in my mouth. It was incredible. And the pickle added a tasty extra crunch.

DogHaus and Hagop Giragossian served up a plate that had lines forming all day – “The Hot Chick.” Chicken Fontina sausage, tomato, avocado, crispy onion, sriracha, and ranch came together on a bun to make one incredible sandwich. The sriracha gave it just the right amount of kick to make this dish memorable all day long at Taste of the Nation Los Angeles.

Another dish that had lines forming was Plan Check Kitchen + Bar’s PCB Sliders. These came with Americanized Dashi Cheese, Ketchup Leather, Schmaltz onions, mixed pickled on a crunch bun. All around Media Park you could hear people asking “where’d you get the burger?”

I adore sushi and poke, so Sweetfin Poke, lead by Dakota Weiss, was another favorite of mine. They served up tuna poke with Serrano watermelon ponzu, fresh yellow watermelon, pickled rind, cilantro, jicama and avocado tempura crispies. I loved every bite of this mini poke bowl. You could put that Serrano watermelon ponzu on anything, and I’d eat it.

I could go on, describing each incredible bite I tasted. But instead, I suggest you look through the photos, salivate over them, regret not attending, set a reminder on your calendar to buy tickets for next year, and most importantly donate to No Kid Hungry. Because we must remember, every bite we ate—every cookie chewed and glass of wine sipped – was all to ensure that no child in the United States should have to go hungry. It is a cause all foodies should rally behind.