May 18, 2012
Foodies Go All GoogaMooga Over Festival
Promising to convert Brooklyn’s Prospect Park into "an amusement park of food and drink," the first-ever GoogaMooga festival takes place this weekend. While 20 bands including Hall & Oates, The Roots and electropop duo Holy Ghost!! are performing, the music will be playing second fiddle to the degustation.
Approximately 75 food vendors, 35 brewers, and 30 winemakers will take over the meadow, a 25-acre space at the center of the 585-acre park. Hip city restaurants like Mile End Delicatessen, Momofoku Milk Bar, M.Wells, The Spotted Pig, Blue Ribbon and Roberta’s are being showcased.
Headlining the event are celebrity chefs, including TV star Anthony Bourdain, Craft chef/owner and Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio, Terrace’s Jean-Georges and BaoHaus’s Eddie Huang. A host of panels include "The Joy of Rhubarb," "MMMM…Beer and Bacon," "The Art of Appetizing," and "Beef Butchering." Lectures also include sustainable food options and tips on opening a restaurant.
"The spotlight is really on the food, the chefs, the wine," Jonathan Mayers, a founder of Superfly Presents, the festival organizer, told The New York Times. "Music will complement it, but those are the stars of the show."
Superfly Presents also runs Bonnaroo, a four-day rock music festival held each June outside Nashville that has also been playing up chefs and culinary fare over the last few years. Noting that other rock festivals such as Outside Lands, Lollapalooza and Coachella are likewise increasingly emphasizing gourmet options, the Times pondered why live music shows have moved away from "cold pizza, warm beer and stale pretzels" over the years.
One reason stated was that food was just an afterthought at many rock festivals in the past. The other was that Millennials, having grown up on the Food Network and already supporting the food truck craze, have advanced on their Baby Boomer parents to become even bigger ‘foodies.’ Also feeding the conversation around food and restaurants is the ability to tweet, blog, write online restaurant reviews on Yelp.com, and even take pictures of mouthwatering meals to show on Facebook.
The connection to music was seen as a natural fit since people are discovering and experimenting with food just like they discover new music. Graham Elliot, a Chicago chef who is culinary director for Lollapalooza, told the Times, "The thing is, food is now as interesting and expressive as music."
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Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: Will Millennials be even bigger foodies than their Baby Boomer parents? What factors do you think are supporting the culinary push at music festivals?
Poll
With so many food-oriented options on TV, it makes sense that each generation will celebrate food. That said, this seems like a bi-coastal and city phenomenon.
As to food at music festivals…it makes sense. People who attend these concerts have disposable income and need to eat. If they can afford $349 tickets to Coachella, why wouldn’t they spend additional money to try some good food? Celebrity chefs lend a different aura to music festivals, contributing to the feeling of each festival being a special event.
As a baby boomer and as a parent I do not think the millennials will experience any harm from all the food being presented in Brooklyn this weekend. I do not think they will even become big foodies or even big people like many of us in our generation. They understand all the health risks we were not aware of at their age. I am impressed at the lineup of cooking talent and that the beer and wine vendors outnumber the food vendors. There may be something there as well since I do not recall wine being a factor at our food events years ago, just the beer, since that was affordable in our youth.
Absolutely. In recent research which I conducted on Millennials versus Baby Boomers, Millennial responses to the following life style statements were significantly different (higher levels of agreement) than those held by Baby Boomers:
“It is important to try different types of food.
“I often talk about restaurants with friends/colleagues.”
“I like to try new restaurants.”
“I enjoy talking about food with friends/colleagues.”
“I regularly watch the Food Network/cooking television shows.”
“I visit internet sites that focus on cooking and meal preparation.”
“I visit restaurant internet sites.”
The data appear to support the emergence of the next generation of foodies.
If my universe of around a dozen Millennials that I see regularly represents any sort of sample, this is a mixed bag, as with any generation. But it does seem to lean heavier in the “foodie” direction. And, with a heavy skew toward craft brews over wines as well.
There are three legitimate craft brewers in the group, one of which competes regularly. There are at least four decent chefs and two of them work in the high-end (Michelin three stars) restaurant industry by choice — four year degrees from well known schools paid for by mom and dad not withstanding.
I know this is father/uncle/friends of friends research — but these kids know their food and drink.
The festival is a great way to enjoy music and food. Millennials will spend money on new and exciting foods, just as us Boomers did at rib fests in the 80’s. I think showcasing local restaurants all in one location gives new meaning to co-op advertising, where the costs to do business are lowered by many participants in one location. Wish I could be there. Anyone who attends this, I hope will write a report on this.
TV and other media influence these folks. There are millions more messages bombarding them than when we were younger. Just think about the tens of millions of FB fans of the top soft drinks.
Millennials intensify most everything we Boomers have done or have been addicted to…. EXCEPT for music… Long live The Big ’80’s!!
The rise of television stations dedicated to food is a big part of why the food portion of any event has been taken to a new level. Not only do you have Food Network, but their sister station cooking channel. Even stations dedicated to other topics like travel have added several shows about food (travel as a side dish). Like the old rock stars of the ’70s, these shows have turned chefs into celebrities. Millennials were really the first young group to experience this culinary revolution. It’s exciting.
I suppose it was inevitable that food preparation and consumption would cross the threshold to become outdoor performance art on a massive scale. I mean, what creation could be more ephemeral than a paper sack of foie gras beignets?
Maybe The Great GoogaMooga and the new food fetishism it seems to represent can be construed as a backlash against the digitalization of our society. You can’t download a pork chop.
Or maybe it’s a straight-up commercial ploy to sell a communal “happening” to the remnants of the rock and roll generation, whose rocks now clink in whiskey glasses and whose rolls sit comfortably just above their belts.
I’m thinking the only acid going around this festival will be in the gastrique.
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With so many food-oriented options on TV, it makes sense that each generation will celebrate food. That said, this seems like a bi-coastal and city phenomenon.
As to food at music festivals…it makes sense. People who attend these concerts have disposable income and need to eat. If they can afford $349 tickets to Coachella, why wouldn’t they spend additional money to try some good food? Celebrity chefs lend a different aura to music festivals, contributing to the feeling of each festival being a special event.
As a baby boomer and as a parent I do not think the millennials will experience any harm from all the food being presented in Brooklyn this weekend. I do not think they will even become big foodies or even big people like many of us in our generation. They understand all the health risks we were not aware of at their age. I am impressed at the lineup of cooking talent and that the beer and wine vendors outnumber the food vendors. There may be something there as well since I do not recall wine being a factor at our food events years ago, just the beer, since that was affordable in our youth.
Absolutely. In recent research which I conducted on Millennials versus Baby Boomers, Millennial responses to the following life style statements were significantly different (higher levels of agreement) than those held by Baby Boomers:
“It is important to try different types of food.
“I often talk about restaurants with friends/colleagues.”
“I like to try new restaurants.”
“I enjoy talking about food with friends/colleagues.”
“I regularly watch the Food Network/cooking television shows.”
“I visit internet sites that focus on cooking and meal preparation.”
“I visit restaurant internet sites.”
The data appear to support the emergence of the next generation of foodies.
If my universe of around a dozen Millennials that I see regularly represents any sort of sample, this is a mixed bag, as with any generation. But it does seem to lean heavier in the “foodie” direction. And, with a heavy skew toward craft brews over wines as well.
There are three legitimate craft brewers in the group, one of which competes regularly. There are at least four decent chefs and two of them work in the high-end (Michelin three stars) restaurant industry by choice — four year degrees from well known schools paid for by mom and dad not withstanding.
I know this is father/uncle/friends of friends research — but these kids know their food and drink.
The festival is a great way to enjoy music and food. Millennials will spend money on new and exciting foods, just as us Boomers did at rib fests in the 80’s. I think showcasing local restaurants all in one location gives new meaning to co-op advertising, where the costs to do business are lowered by many participants in one location. Wish I could be there. Anyone who attends this, I hope will write a report on this.
TV and other media influence these folks. There are millions more messages bombarding them than when we were younger. Just think about the tens of millions of FB fans of the top soft drinks.
Millennials intensify most everything we Boomers have done or have been addicted to…. EXCEPT for music… Long live The Big ’80’s!!
The rise of television stations dedicated to food is a big part of why the food portion of any event has been taken to a new level. Not only do you have Food Network, but their sister station cooking channel. Even stations dedicated to other topics like travel have added several shows about food (travel as a side dish). Like the old rock stars of the ’70s, these shows have turned chefs into celebrities. Millennials were really the first young group to experience this culinary revolution. It’s exciting.
I suppose it was inevitable that food preparation and consumption would cross the threshold to become outdoor performance art on a massive scale. I mean, what creation could be more ephemeral than a paper sack of foie gras beignets?
Maybe The Great GoogaMooga and the new food fetishism it seems to represent can be construed as a backlash against the digitalization of our society. You can’t download a pork chop.
Or maybe it’s a straight-up commercial ploy to sell a communal “happening” to the remnants of the rock and roll generation, whose rocks now clink in whiskey glasses and whose rolls sit comfortably just above their belts.
I’m thinking the only acid going around this festival will be in the gastrique.