Pygmalion Festival expands with restaurant vendors
Black Dog Smoke and Ale House serves The Daily Illini Dish of the Week, a beef brisket drizzled with Georgia peach barbecue sauce and a side of sweet potato fries. The restaurant, located on Broadway Ave. in Urbana, usually has a line of people outside waiting to eat just before it opens every day.
September 15, 2016
Music lovers will get an extra weekend to “Pyg” out this Friday and Saturday.
A food component in Downtown Champaign has been added to this year’s Pygmalion Festival.
The FOOD Festival will be made up of six local restaurants including Maize, Black Dog and Watson’s Shack and Rail. The vendors will open at 5 p.m. on Friday and 4 p.m. on Saturday at The Accord’s outdoor venue, 51 E. Main St.
Producer and creator of the Pygmalion Festival Seth Fein decided to further develop the festival.
“Seth has been dreaming up this component of the festival for about six years now, actually … seeing the growth of the festival in scope has been rewarding to create a more culturally relevant event in this region of the Midwest,” said Patrick Singer, director of development for the Pygmalion Festival.
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Since its founding in 2005, the festival has hosted musical artists to perform shows all across the C-U area.
Some of the venues include the Krannert Center, Exile on Main Street and various bars in Downtown Champaign.
Adding the extra weekend has given artists like Joan Shelley, The Fights and The Hood Internet x Showyousuck another stage to perform apart from the main headliners who are performing next weekend.
Festival attendees will be able to experience a sampling of restaurants without leaving the venue.
Annie Victor, former Illini Media Company employee and sophomore in LAS, said having all of the best restaurants of Champaign in one place was what convinced her to try the festival for the first time this year.
“Black Dog Smoke and Ale House is really good but they’re not conveniently located,” Victor said. “I’ve only been there once, so I’m excited to have a chance to eat there again.”
Including only six restaurants was a purposeful decision for this inaugural event.
“We chose a small number of restaurants in our first year because we’ve never done this before,” Singer said. “The hope is to grow to more restaurants in the future — but this being our first year we wanted to keep it as manageable as possible. There are a lot of possibilities for the food festival in the future.”
Ticket information can be found on the festival’s website with day passes ranging from $25-$30 and festival passes being $99. FOOD, MADE, TECH and LIT festival components will be free to attend, though the available food ranges from $4-8.
Each vendor will offer a limited festival menu and specialty cocktails, like a lemon bourbon fizz from Bacaro and spicy paloma from Maize.
“This year felt ripe to implement a food component into the mix,” Singer said. “We think it can grow into something really special — and this being our first year of doing it, it’s an experiment and a challenge we’re really excited about.”
