We’ll take the Pepsi challenge on this one, but no music festival in the country has a better food and drink experience than Outside Lands. The San Francisco massive has led the way in taking a hyperlocal approach with the offerings at the fest, which takes place this year from August 8-10 at Golden Gate Park. What you get at the Outside Lands is a marvelous reflection of San Francisco and the Bay’s world-class dining and nightlife scene.
Tanya Kollar has been curating the food vendor lineup at Outside Lands for nearly a decade, and she’s damn good at it, too. Of the 95 different food businesses at the festival, 85% of them are BIPOC or women-owned, which is an amazing representation of the multi-cultural food scene in San Francisco, Oakland, and the greater Bay Area.
“I really focus on the diversity of food lineups,” Kollar says. “In the overall picture, but also each separate area of the festival. So you won’t find two burgers or fried chicken sandwiches next to each other. You want people to look at a row of options and have enough diversity to make their decision really hard when it comes to what they’re going to land on.”
Before becoming the food curator in chief, Kollar worked at the festival in multiple capacities since year one in 2009, including at various food stands, so she knows the ins and outs of these unique back-of-house operations. In effect, she doesn’t just select vendors for the “Taste Of The Bay” slate and call it a day. There are over 800 individual food items being served at Outside Lands, and she and her team work closely to help tighten up menus, booth layouts, and advise on the many other logistics and equipment rentals for each of these pop-up kitchen set-ups.
With an 85-90% return rate of food vendors, Kollar says that the goal is to “Enhance the offerings, rather than make it redundant.” She beams at this year’s addition of Caché, a French restaurant located just outside of Golden Gate Park. “We’ve never had proper French cuisine before!” she says.
But this is where things get wild — and awesome. Caché is a great example of the whimsy you’ll find across the weekend’s menus, which are certainly not what you’d expect at a music festival: Octopus hot dogs with mango curry mayonnaise and Parisian sausage sandwiches?! Yes please.
There are so many gloriously unpredictable culinary gems to uncover throughout the park. Plus, highly curated beer, wine, and cocktails. Below, you’ll find our picks for the eats and sips to chase at Outside Lands, plus some insight from some of the people who make it all happen. In the end, you’ll see why this is the best food and drink lineup of any major music festival in the country.
The Pop-Ups
Pop-up food culture in the Bay is strong. It’s hard to come up in expensive cities like SF and Oakland, so oftentimes, some of the best chef talent is bubbling up in the pop-up space before eventually opening up their own brick and mortar storefront. “Pop-ups are one of the coolest culinary adventures you can go on,” Kollar says. “Finding them, following them on socials… It’s an adventure in discovery. Plus, they’re so experienced with making something out of nothing that they’re such a perfect fit operationally for Outside Lands. It’s like, ‘here, make a kitchen inside of a field.’”
Outside Lands has brought this element of discovery to the park, and this year features places like Provecho, an Oaxacan fusion pop-up that will be serving bento boxes with either smoked brisket, sashimi, or mole tofu, as well as homemade salsa, and macha garlic noodles. Peruvian-Eritrean spot Michoz has Peruvian choripán sandwiches and Eritrean spiced nachos with huancaina cheese sauce, plus chicha morada to sip on too. Then there’s Poorboy Coffee (can you ever have enough solid coffee options at a festival?) serving up brown sugar lattes, hot chocolate with toasted marshmallow, sourdough cinnamon rolls, and even an NA Irish coffee.
There’s going to be 210,000 people at Golden Gate Park over the weekend. That opportunity is not lost on Provecho’s chef/owner, Eder Ramirez: “This is big for me, because I haven’t always been able to push my exposure as a pop-up. But now, so many people will get a chance to see what I do and experience the Bay Area pop-up scene. I’m smoking 20+ briskets, and sushi is my bread and butter. I’m hoping to crush it.”
The Stalwarts
There’s a reason why 85-90% of the food vendors return each year: They’re some of the best establishments in the Bay and really excel at this chaotic festival food exercise. In fact, they get better at it every year. Reem’s California, an Arab street food institution from the Mission District, is adding an Arab style lamb “La Gringa” quesabirria flatbread wrap with Oaxacan cheese to go along with the consistently excellent Arab “Party” spicy garlic fries. There’s an advantage for returning vendors to know precisely what resonates with people at the festival level.
“We saw what a hit the Arab Party Fries were last year, and La Gringa is also one of our most popular items in-house, so it felt like a no-brainer to do both this year,” says Reem’s Culinary Director Casey Rebecca Nunes. “Plus, who’s going to be mad at more lamb?!”
Other favorites to look out for include hush puppy corndogs and New Orleans style Mufulettas from the Haight Ashbury’s Sandy’s, Nepalese Momo dumplings from Bini’s Kitchen, secret breakfast ice cream (bourbon and corn flakes, trust!) sundaes from Humphry Slocombe, insane smash burgers from Smish Smash, flaky, portable Jamaican beef patties from Peaches Patties, and a fogged-over SF special warming cup of pho broth from Bodega.
“Working the festival for us helps break up the monotony of the day-to-day at the shop. It’s chaotic, but there’s something really special within it all,” says Sandy’s Owner/Chef Peterson Harter. “And for a lot of attendees, it’s the one time in the year where they’ll be eating one of our mufulettas.”
The Caviar? The Caviar!
In 2025, caviar will be all over Outside Lands. NorCal’s decorated Tsar Nicoulai Caviar is a go-to choice for local chefs. Meanwhile, SF’s The Caviar Co has its own booth at Wine Lands serving up their own Kaluga hybrid caviar-topped hot dogs with pickled shallots. Kollar tells us that ten vendors in total will have caviar offerings; many of them as part of the Limited Edition dishes program that sees only ten select vendors selling 10-30ish portions of a special item a day.
The Mission Asian comfort outpost Piglet & Co is serving their mala honey chicken wings with Tsar Nicoulai white sturgeon caviar on top of the ranch dressing dip. Korean BBQ joint Um.Ma has lobster tail Korean corn dogs with kimchi mayo, topped with Russian sturgeon osetra caviar. Chinese fast casual outpost Mamahuhu will have “General Roe’s Caviar Fries” with mushroom seaweed garlic seasoning, Tsar Nicoulai Siberian caviar, and ginger scallion crème fraîche.
Let’s be honest, this is badass Instagram fodder. But practically speaking, Kollar says there’s more to it: “It gives people an opportunity to look at the difference between varieties of caviar and how restaurants pair them with different dishes that are all really refined, sexy, and seamless.”
La Cocina
One of the most essential and effective non-profits in San Francisco, La Cocina helps women and BIPOC-owned food entrepreneurs launch their food businesses. There are nine La Cocina alums serving food at Outside Lands this year (including the aforementioned Bini’s Kitchen, Peaches Patties, and Reem’s California) and three current program participants.
There’s a theme each year at the La Cocina incubator booth in Hellman Hollow near the Panhandle stage, and this year, it’s “Wings of the World.” Sisters will offer Afghani chicken kabob wings, Tonantzin serves up Habanero Oaxacan mole chicken wings, and Xula will feature adobado wings with chiltepe-chimichurri. In effect, a future Outside Lands stalwart vendor could very well be in the mix. Catch them all!
Beer Lands
The Bay Area is one of the best craft beer landscapes in the country, and every year, Dave McLean curates one hell of a lineup of NorCal’s finest breweries. The Beer Lands footprint will move up a bit to be more centrally located in the Polo Field, and there are some exciting new participating vendors this year, like award-winning, cross-Bay brewery Cellarmaker and Arcata’s Paskenta Mad River Brewing, a woman-led brewery now owned by the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians. McLean, who famously started Haight-Ashbury’s Magnolia Brewing before selling the company, will also be debuting his new brewery, Hidden Splendor.
“These are the first two beers I’ve kegged,” McLean says of his just completed Goin’ Home ESB and Just A Dream English Pale. “The fact that this is the first place that anybody gets to try these beers is pretty special.”
McLean also notes that the craft beer industry’s resurgence in lager and pilsners is reflected in the beer lands draft beer lineup and adds that, “You’ll also be able to get cans of beer from a couple of breweries at Beer Lands for the first time,” he says. “So you can grab a can of Moonlight’s Reality Czeck Pilsner or East Brother’s Bo Pils and drink it as you cruise the festival.”
Wine Lands and Cocktail Magic
Wine Lands returns to its home in McLaren Pass, and there’s another smaller outpost in the VIP village. Curated by Peter Eastlake (a one-time winner of Food & Wine magazine’s Sommelier of the Year), we’re told that just about all of the vendors will have sparkling wines available in their lineup, so rev up those caviar engines. We’re stoked on new additions like Idlewild (which grows Piedmontese wines in NorCal) and Duckhorn’s more accessible Decoy label. Returning wineries of note include Roederer Estate, which makes some of the best bubbles in the state out of their Mendocino winery, and Berkeley’s natty wine masters Broc Cellars.
If you need something stiffer than beer or wine, Cocktail Magic sprouts up near the main entrance in Lindley Meadow. These cocktails aren’t your downtown rooftop malarkey; they’re curated by Ethan Terry of the Halfway Club, an industry staple bar in the Excelsior district that buzzes with a who’s who of local bartenders on Sunday afternoons. Cheers!