Vegan Beer & Food Festival

Golden Road!

We recently enjoyed an amazing day full of music, food, and beer tasting. Did I mention it was a vegan fest?

The 3rd Annual Vegan Food and Beer Festival took place in Hollywood on Sunset Blvd. They apparently expanded the event from the previous year, bringing it across the street from the Roxy Theatre to an empty lot, instead of in the Theatre and it's small parking lot.

This was a great event. Knowing that all the food there was edible was very exciting, especially since they had a lot of yummy things, i.e., sushi, nachos, sliders, pretzels. Believe you me, I could go on.

When we got there, we received taster glasses and a check list with all the food stands, beer stands and music groups listed. This of course brought out the gamer in me and I had to try to get all my achievements by checking everything off. :) Of course this was impossible, because if I actually tried all the different foods there, I would be broke and most likely sick to my stomach.

The best part about this festival was that the tastings were all free. Of course you had to buy tickets to get in (it sold out twice!), so free is relative. The downside to the free tastings was that a lot of the breweries ran out of beer rather quickly. I don't think we got to half of the stands before we started seeing people out of drinks. This was a bummer since we came to try all the beers, but we still had a blast. It probably was better anyway, there were a lot of breweries there and it took us a while just to get to half of them.

Dan informing the world it's his birthday.

The food options were great and I can't wait to check out some more of these restaurants we discovered. Like the sushi. Oh my goodness. I can't wait to go in to their restaurant. We even got a coupon for a free roll. Sweet! And to think when we were moving here, I was worried I would be in non-veg friendly country. Sheeh, I was wrong. I'm actually starting to wonder if SoCal is more veg friendly which is mind blowing to me.

Getting back to the festival, we chatted with some of the people at the brewery stands about beer and I also found out one of my favourite restaurants from San Francisco is coming down to Los Angeles, Gracias Madre! We got a better idea of how quickly the craft beer scene is growing down here. There seems to be a good amount of places all around. The only obstacle is traffic, well that and time. But knowing us, we will make our way to a decent amount of them.

Maple doughnut. Yum.

The festival even had a band lineup, which Dan was excited about. Not that we knew any of the bands, but he loves music at festivals and loves to just stand there and watch. He thinks I'm crazy because I like to walk around and see things since you can hear the music everywhere you go! And I think he's crazy for wanting to just stand there watching people pluck guitars when there are things to see!

I definitely plan on going again next year, this was a blast. Even if you aren't vegan, I'd encourage you to check this out next year. The amount to drink was worth it alone, and who knows you might find that vegan food isn't all that bad. :)