A New Bay Area Food Festival Celebrates Chefs of Color and Diasporic Unity

You’re at a food and wine festival in the Bay Area. But instead of the usual Chardonnay and chicken pairing, you’re drinking arak — an anise seed–based Palestinian spirit — and eating hearty Ethiopian sambussas in a space that is designated for diasporic, cross-communal celebration.

You might sip on a Filipino and Taiwanese tea founded by a pair of young AAPI entrepreneurs while enjoying bites from Chef Nelson German — the Dominican savant behind Oakland’s alaMar and Sobre Mesa. And since true nourishment requires more than just food and beverages, you can sneak off for a CBD sound bath, or keep your energy balanced at an R&B Soul Lounge, before returning for the afterparty.

That’s a snippet of the vision that San Francisco event organizer Gina Mariko Rosales has in mind for the first-ever POC Food and Wine Festival.

“We want people to know up front that it’s a diverse space, and you’re welcome here,” Rosales says. “We’re already battling in the wine space. It doesn’t feel comfortable or safe for some people, and I knew I needed to create and name it so people would feel it’s a space for them. This is a celebration of the global majority. You gotta have big balls to do this shit. It’s not an easy feat.”

Having co-founded UNDISCOVERED SF’s Creative Night Market in SOMA Pilipinas, and with nearly a decade of experience working as an event specialist with Google, Rosales believes she has the savvy and background to execute such an ambitious three-day festival.

“I had a huge desire to build a multicultural space to come together and meet each other, share resources, create collaborations that didn’t exist and expand our reach and make it bigger than any one cultural group. We need a space to come together,” she continues.

In all, the bodacious festival will include seven events happening across two venues in Berkeley and San Francisco from Thursday, May 2, through Sunday, May 5 (with Friday, May 3, as an off-day). The inaugural festivities will comprise a who’s who of Bay Area foodmakers and small business owners of color, all gathered at one intentional table.

The festival will kick off with a “Palestinian Family Meal” featuring one of the Bay Area’s most notable Palestinian chefs in Reem Assil (of Reem’s). Assil’s dishes — an array of mezzes, flatbreads, sweets and more served for large group enjoyment — will be paired with Terah Wine Co. and Terra Sancta, a local winemaker and an importer of Middle Eastern wines and arak, respectively.

The opening night dinner underscores a mindful awareness to serve more than just good food. Rosales believes it’s also an opportunity to empower, uplift and educate around the various, complex politics that different Bay Area groups — often working in solidarity — must combat.

“Food is an entryway to culture,” Rosales says. “Everyone wants good food. That’s how you get people in, and then it’s up to you to teach a lesson.”

Other festival highlights will include Saturday’s “Main Dish,” a palate-friendly carousel of curated food-and-wine pairings from 14 participating chefs. Featured dishes include Chef Tu David Phu’s banh khot (a rich Vietnamese pancake) with caviar and velarde truffle, Tacos Sincero’s charred sweet potato tostada with lime aioli, and salsa verde, and Tarts de Feybesse’s iÎle flottante — floating meringue in a custardy creme anglaise, infused with flavors from the Philippines.

The concept is to expose festival goers with as many diverse foodmakers as possible from the Bay Area’s impressive scene.

“Putting Ethiopia and the greater continent of Africa on the culinary map has always been our mission,” a representative for one participant, Oakland’s Cafe Colucci, told KQED via email. “This is an opportunity to show our greater Bay Area community the power and importance of our diverse food environment.”

A “Brown Is Beautiful” afterparty and a “Closing Family Meal” with Big Bad Wolf — a popular cannabis-infused pop-up from first-generation Korean American chef Haeji Chun — will close out the festivities.

Think of that T.W.D.Y song, “Player’s Holiday” — but add in lentil dips, old-world vino, DJs, marketplace vendors, diasporic snacks, CBD goods and botanicals distributed for and by people of color in an effort to heal and connect.

“The heart of what we want to get at with this festival is sharing culture. But this is also about Brown and Black joy,” says Rosales. “We need and deserve spaces where we are taken care of. We deserve nice things. We deserve beautiful experiences. We don’t always have to be struggling and hustling.”

The POC Food and Wine Festival will take place from Thursday, May 2, through Sunday, May 5, at Four One Nine (419 10th St.) in San Francisco and Ciel Creative Space (935 Carleton St.) in Berkeley. Sliding-scale ticket options are available. Attendees can select single events, entire days, the complete weekend package or the VIP package, depending on their budgets.