Gastrofest

Hello beautiful city! With sunshine and breeze and cute fur babies walking around everywhere and delicious local food trucks and locally produced items this event was a hit!Location- right behind the mosh museum, by the river and friendship fountain.Vibe- outside, chill, jazz music playing, fur babies everywhere, organic locally produced products, nice open breeze. Great for social time.I was able to walk around and spot the homemade lemonade and honey stand locally sourced. The yogurts and ice cream was produced and churned everything was homemade. It was pretty packed with stands from restaurants like black sheep and Ethiopian, Brazilian and all kinds of food trucks were around. I loved seeing the chickens being fed greens by the children and the pet food truck tripped me out. I thought it was the cutest thing. I would've liked to see more different stands and different products this year but still it was an amazing time. I was able to spin the wheel for donations to the local kids in need and I won 3 tickets for golf and a wasabi neck chain from the anime convention. It was definitely all in great fun!

Long overdue recap of Jax's best foodie festival.First off, Gastrofest takes place in Hemming Park in the middle of March. It's a perfect time of year for an outdoor festival. One you can actually walk around, mingle, sample, and not feel like you're going to suffer from a stroke.They truly make the focus of the event what we all long for: delicious food. The best part? The participating businesses sell small samples of their dishes, only for a few bucks a piece. Which allows you to indulge in a vast variety of restaurants without breaking the bank, or filling up too quickly. The absolute stand out was the Short Rib Mac n' Cheese, courtesy of Perfect Pear Catering. Like, so incredible, that nearly four months later, I still have midnight fantasies about the mind-altering flavors!Other restaurants like Il Desco, Orsay, and Blue Bamboo displayed great dishes as well. Same to all the other restaurants, too. And, the craft beer scene was on point this year. Kudos to Coppertail (Tampa) for stealing my hoppy palette.The only major qualm I had with Gastrofest was that it wasn't clear which restaurants would be present during each time slot. I attended the first half of the festival, but at 3pm, new restaurants set up shop. Not only wasn't I able to try any of their dishes, they didn't make it known in their promotion that the fest was essentially divided into two parts. Although the future of Hemming Park festivals is up in the air, Gastrofest knows how to please the masses. A great, foodie fest indeed!

GastroFarce!Thank God it was a beautiful day - one star strictly for the weather - another star for location. Execution - zeroI haven't attended in the past & I wish I had. If this year was in any way representative of former years I'd have to really take any of my friend's endorsements with severe suspicion I've been to other events put on by the same group, but will do so with great caution in the futureThere were only a handful of restaurants represented & a smattering of food trucks. Entertainment was sparse & well worth the price of admission :)I hope they go back to the original format next year - if not - I'll spend my time elsewhere!

This side of JAX is so wonderful for a festival. The views of our beautiful city are breath taking. The festival was laid out nicely circled around the fountain. Various kinds of vendors were found not just food. The music was great but wished seating was better as it was full every time I stopped for lack of space. Their was not as much food booths as I wished they had and Long lines at the few kept me from trying alot of the food offerings but the one they had looked great. I was in and out within 2 hours and located great parking so it was a enjoyable time spent on a beautiful day.

Despite the rain on the horizon, this was a great event. I arrived just as things were getting started and there were pros and cons with such an early arrival. I had little difficulty finding parking, which was a good thing but unfortunately, some of the vendors weren't quite ready and others hadn't even arrived yet to set up! The advertisements suggested that all of the vendors would have "tasting" items but some restaurants - and food trucks - must've missed that memo. For the ones who did have sample items, the portion sizes varied, but most were worth the $2-3. I tried the following items:Nomi's Cheese Bar - Fried brie cheese ball ($3)Abtrakt - Chicken sisig taco tasting ($2)Pear Market - Coca-cola pulled brisket, chive cornbread, housemade pickle ($3) and jalapeno lemonade ($1)Bistro Aix - Bacon braised short rib and polenta cake ($3)Bono's/Pastiche - Pulled pork slider ($3)Congaree & Penn - Strawberry key lime soda ($1)Since this was my first year, I have nothing to compare it to, but I think I prefer paying for what I want rather than the set price, as was apparently the case last year. I don't think I could've eaten $45 worth of food, unless I spent the entire day there and was prepared to sleep the following day! Perhaps offering an "all-inclusive" option and an a la carte option would appeal to everyone.Kudos to the organizers!

Gastrofest 2019 was pretty great. It was a lively day so the weather was definitely on our side.It was nice to see a mix of vendors that aren't normally at these events, new blood!Lived the green aspects and encouragement to bring utensils, etc. All the food was yummy and I got to see lots of friends! Great event in Jax. Keep it up.

A festival all about Food!?!? Yes! Yes! Yes! GastroFest isn't just about food but that is the main attraction! It also highlights the beauty of Jax ( Loved the new location at Friendship Fountain), being Good to the environment ( be green), and trying all the foods! Loved the concept of having all the food vendors have small plates for sale for around $2-5 each that way you can walk around and try different places! So smart, I love sampling a bunch of different things! We tried BlkSheep they had a fried chicken slider which was tasty, then we headed over to Ibex Ethiopian and got the chicken plate...oh so good!! It was a sampler plate of quite a few items, each tasting better then the last! I will say for $11 it was a very skimpy plate, but it definitely sparked my taste buds to go to the restaurant to try a full meal! They had a whole row of beer and drinks tents, we got a drink from Manifest and they put the stank on it! Lol, it was strong!! They also had a band playing right next to the river, it was such a nice day out!! I loved it and look forward to going next year! Pro tip is bring cash, a bunch of $1 and $5!!

Gastrofest was fun. I actually looked to see what was happening and came to one of the talks they were having - Kailo Nutrition. Worth the hour of my time. I loved seeing the different kinds of vegan or gluten free alternatives. Ate some delicious food at El Mariachi Loco. Their Mexikale salad was in point! They had pupua that was like an arepa with a slaw and tomato sauce on top. Ended the day with a cookies and cream ice pop and slice of cake. They had food, music, how to's, beer, people watching, and more. I loved seeing my friend Maira there too.

Love that Jacksonville is finally working towards bringing people downtown again! Hemming Plaza is a good location but parking is a challenge and it's kind of small for what they are trying to do. It's a shame that the first Baptist Church, who has several large parking garages downtown couldn't be bothered to open them up for this function or any other function that they are not directly involved in. This leads people to park willy-nilly all over downtown when you can find somewhere to park. This particular function was pretty well attended so unfortunately that meant it was crowded and people were kind of stuffed into hemming Plaza. The lines for the three food trucks I saw exceeded 20 minutes and had probably 25 to 30 people in each line. The food tasting stands were likewise overloaded. I tried grilled pork belly with watermelon and pickled onions from Sbraga. It was OK. The pork was dry despite the fact that it was surrounded by a lot of fat, I don't know how they manage that but I think probably they grilled it too long. It tasted like it had not been marinated at all, it actually tasted like it well-done piece of ham with the fat attached. That sucks because I really wanted to like it. Pork belly when done correctly is great. This was seven dollars and I got six small cubes of pork each probably 0.5" x 0.5" x 0.75 of an inch . Apparently they were bound and determined to make money off of this event wish I guess I can't blame them I also try the grilled corn on a stick Mexican style. It was tasty, the dip with that they put it into was a little bit dick and seem to be mayonnaise-based. It was half of a small piece of corn, three dollars is pretty expensive for that. All in all if the food at the location is the same as the stand I probably won't be going there. The Mexican food truck that is at a lot of these events was also there and they were good but also not great. Four tiny tacos and a quesadilla, and order of jalapeño poppers and a couple drinks came to over $50. I was really disappointed with the jalapeño poppers because they were literally taken out of the Cisco bags and thrown into the fryer, seven poppers for seven dollars. SMH. Do you believe that they used for the tacos was dry and overcooked and pretty tasteless I don't know if they were cutting some extra on the flyer or what but I thought it was better than this the last time Three dollars for a bottle of Mexican soda is also kind of steep but I get it, it's an event. They also charged me $1.50 for adding guacamole. They literally gave me a 2 ounce ramekin that was not even full. Sigh. We got a churro as well and that was 250, it was pretty good but I also think that it was prefabricated been ordered from a food distributor. No sauce. Just churro. Quesadilla at $12 was pretty tasty but it's hard to justify $12 for a quesadilla when you have to stand up to eat it next to the truck. It took them about 20 minutes to complete my order. I know it was busy. There was not enough seating for the amount of people that arrived and people were literally smashed and trying to walk around. Great idea but probably the wrong venue. Next year they should do it at Metro Park. Easy parking and plenty of room!

Loved this event! And I have to admit I was quite hesitant when I first started hearing rumblings when i was in the early planning stages. Was Jacksonville ready for such a festival? We most certainly were!! All the local favorites were there and the rotating vendors throughout the day, definitely kept it interesting and made it an all day affair. We ducked out of the heat for a bit and enjoyed the Gospel of Beer seminar and the Bold Bean Coffee cuppings being offered at Down the Rabbit Hole. I tried so much this fine River City had to offer. 29 South, Moxie, Black Sheep, Corner Taco, Jalapeno Truck, Orsay, and so many more. I waddled back to my car at the end of the day with a happy belly. Ran into so many people throughout the day and the weather honestly could not have been better!Can't wait to see this event come back.