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Crowds at the 2019 edition of Broad Appetit
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The booth for Lucy's Restaurant (currently closed) at Broad Appetit 2019
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Dishes from the Lebanese Food Festival
“I think [food festivals are] one of the last types of events that will end up making a comeback,” says Tracey Leverty of Broad Appetit organizer Echelon Event Management. Drawing an average of 40,000 people each year, Broad Appetit is held annually in June with small plates from local restaurants and live music. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event has been canceled for the past two years.
Decisions to cancel food festivals for 2021 had to be made as early as January of this year, and many organizers worried it would not be safe enough to hold the events by summer.
“[Broad Appetit] takes six months of planning to really pull it together, and with things changing on a dime, certainly it made June of 2021 [feel] a little bit early [for] everyone,” Leverty says.
Broad Appetit is just one of many local food festivals faced with this dilemma. In July of 2020, the Armenian Food Festival, typically hosted each September by St. James Armenian Church, had been rescheduled to September 2021 but was ultimately canceled for a second year.
“[Deciding to cancel] was the challenge that we had this year. How comfortable are people going to be in crowds? How do we determine what’s safe and what’s not?” says Leiza Bouroujian, a member of the Armenian Food Festival planning committee.
“[Canceling our festival] brought tears to our eyes,” says Sandra Brown, a representative from the Lebanese Food Festival, which is hosted by Saint Anthony Maronite Church. “I get emotional talking about it. It’s so much part of our community. It’s a family affair at Saint Anthony’s. It is a multigenerational event, and we get together, and we cook, and we laugh and joke. We cook as if you’re coming to our house to have dinner.”
The 2020 Lebanese Food Festival was originally rescheduled for October of 2021 but has since been postponed until 2022.
“The community feel of it is what I feel like we're gonna miss. Just to give back to the community and enjoy each other's company. Also, it's an important piece of us bringing our culture, our Armenian community, to Richmond,” Bouroujian says.
Despite the limitations due to the pandemic, Bouroujian and Brown have worked with their churches to keep the community spirit alive safely. In early June, St. James held its first family picnic since the pandemic.
“[The picnic is] for the community and bringing young families together and celebrating each other’s company,” Bouroujian says.
In December, Saint Anthony’s held a fundraiser during which church members were able to order Lebanese food, and the proceeds went to aid orphans in Lebanon.
While Leverty is excited to see Broad Appetit make its return in the coming years, she sees it running differently than it has in the past. Before the pandemic, the festival had been set to expand from four blocks to five. In the future, she thinks the event will operate on a smaller scale to accommodate a post-pandemic world.
Other festivals that were canceled for 2021 include the 43rd annual Greek Food Festival, although there is hope to bring some iteration of the event to the community later this year, according to the festival website, as well as The Richmond Jewish Food Festival, which takes place in January and plans to return for 2022. The Filipino Festival at Our Lady of Lourdes church in Glen Allen, originally slated for Aug. 13 and 14 this year, was recently canceled as well, while the Richmond Folk Festival and its walkaround food tasting event and fundraiser, Folk Feast, will return this October.
As for the Lebanese festival, Brown remains uncertain of how it will operate in the future. “We are planning to do the festival as always,” she says, “but we can only do what we can do safely.”
Bouroujian, while mourning a second year without the Armenian Food Festival, has high hopes for 2022. “It was a very hard decision to make, but we know our goal is to put all of our energy and reenergize and focus on 2022 and make [the festival] come back full blast,” she says.
