This weekend, one of the Bay Area’s biggest and most forward-thinking food festivals gets underway in downtown Berkeley, offering a multicultural smorgasbord of jollof, lumpia, curry rice bowls, Cajun fried chicken and Dole Whip–style soft serve. Add in an array of mostly local art, apparel and wellness brands, and there will be about 100 vendors in all, the vast majority of which are owner-operated small businesses run by people of color.
The biggest catch? Everything will be 100% vegan.
That’s Bizerkeley Food Festival in a nutshell. The annual vegan food festival returns to Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park for its fourth edition this Sunday, Sept. 1. Founder Erika Hazel, a Berkeley-born educator and vegan food blogger, is committed to showing not only that veganism can be delicious, but also that there’s more to the food than just crunchy granola and microgreens. That it isn’t a lifestyle only suitable for affluent white hippies.
So yes, there will be plenty of kombucha on tap at the festival — but also soul food from The Vegan Hood Chefs, Nigerian fufu and oyster mushroom suya from That Hausa Vegan, and fusion (plant-based) shrimp po’boy sushi rolls from Sacramento’s Chef J. Redd. And a number of prominent non-vegan restaurants and food trucks will adapt their menus in order to provide strictly plant-based offerings. Championship-pedigreed jollof rice truck Jollof Kitchen, Trinidadian comfort food spot Cocobreeze and Filipino street food innovator Sarap Shop are just a few of the vendors that are sure to attract long lines.
All in all, the Bizerkeley festival almost certainly features the most diverse, boldly flavored vegan food lineup you’ll encounter in Northern California this year — the one least likely to leave you asking, “Where’s the seasoning?”
Meanwhile, it’s also probably the only vegan festival you’ll attend this year headlined by one of the rising stars of Bay Area rap: big-steppin’ Stunnaman02 himself. The San Francisco rapper will take the stage to perform his most recent single, “Eat a Salad,” with its very festival-appropriate lyrics: “Your life would hit different if you kept your diet balanced / That poison in your body got your mind filled with malice / Put the bullshit down and go and eat a salad, come on.”
As it turns out, Stunnaman02 isn’t coming to Bizerkeley Fest just to perform. As a budding food entrepreneur himself, he’ll also be on hand to sell his 02 Juice line of limeades.
Bizerkeley Food Festival takes place on Sunday, Sept. 1, noon–6 p.m., at 2151 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Tickets start at $10.49, with free admission for children 12 years old and younger.
