From the start, Music Tastes Good proclaimed itself as something different. The boutique music festival count increased in the 2016 summer, and each of those fests had its own curatorial angle and performance lineup. At that time, late artist Josh Fischel from Long Beach brought together a group of culture lovers for a new celebration of this city that was different from any other celebration.
The first edition of Music Tastes Good took over almost all the Arts District of Long Beach area much to the chagrin of several residents trapped in its footprint. However, nobody claimed that the festival was not up to the mark. It would take some more years for the culinary clout of Long Beach to catch up with Fischel’s vision. However, the musician pushed for chefs in Long Beach to have the same standing with both the artists and bands on the bill of the festival.
The headliners for the festival were the Specials, Squeeze, and De La Soul. Alongside them were chefs Dave McLellan, Philip Pretty, Eddie Ruiz, and other chefs who made custom food items for a farm-to-table event at Padre. However, the fancy experiment with dishes at a local music festival ran behind schedule before it was eventually cut short as teams used up their ingredients. Fortunately, there was an extremely spacious indoor area for food with local favorites like Sophy’s, Pizzanista! and Robert Earl’s BBQ.
For its second edition, the festival changed its stages to the Marina GreenPark location in Long Beach and transformed that culinary event into a moving tent of demonstrations and discussions. For nominal fees, attendees got to have endless bites from local chefs and chefs from the City of New Orleans. The spacious area also got expanded in Coachella-style.
Almost two years following the death of Fischel, the homegrown festival returned with its most accessible and best culinary programming.
To back up the so-called Import/Export theme, organizers hired Khanh Hoang, an internationally known chef, for the thriving food scene of Long Beach for newbies to be part of the tent. Hoang had the quality of being tenacious like a buyer of musical talent as he visited port cities on the Pacific Coast to invite popular chefs. Some of those well-known chefs were Nancy Leon from Chan’s Bistro in Tijuana and Wesley Young from the Pidgin restaurant location in Vancouver.
Better still, the 2018 Taste Tent experience did not put all those creative and important cooks and their products behind a costly paywall. Instead, it was accessible to every attendee, with sliding prices of $5 to $15 only. The change brought the festival in line with the growing democratization of culinary culture, offering options to standard customers who were accustomed to farm-to-table products behind eye-bulging prices and exclusivity. Fischel wanted to make Music Tastes Good a festival with food and music in equal measures, so it had to use its own culinary rockstars on stage.
On the Music Tastes Good website, five Long Beach chefs and some other cooks were offered a title treatment identical to musical headliners like New Order, Janelle Monae, and others. The chefs posed more casually than how they would pose for high-production promotional shots such as the shots for the musical performances. Some wore their favorite canvas aprons or chef’s coats, but all invited people to sample their culinary creations.