Local chefs to serve at Terra Madre Americas three-day event in Sacramento

From Filipino street food to modern Chinese cuisine, Sacramento chefs are showcasing their roots and flavors this weekend as Terra Madre Americas brings one of the country’s largest new food festivals to the city. The three-day event kicks off at noon Friday at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center downtown.

Modeled after Terra Madre Salone del Gusto in Italy, the festival is a celebration of food, drink and the people who make them — with a strong focus on sustainability, culture and connection.

While chefs, farmers, winemakers and brewers from across North and South America will lead tastings, panels and Slow Food experiences, the event also highlights Sacramento’s deep ties to the land through local dishes rooted in the region.

Marc Agtina of Good Love is elated to be participating in the Terra Madre Americas international food festival happening through Sunday.

“I’ll be representing Good Love, cooking alongside Restaurant XO and Day La Flour in collaboration with Our Street Market,” Agtina said. “We’ll be serving a fun street food style menu using local ingredients that represents our different cultures and upbringing.”

Good Love, a Sacramento-based catering business that specializes in Filipino American dishes and delicacies such as lumpia, Filipino-style hot dogs and barbecue.

Agtina, a Sacramento resident originally from Stockton, said he’s excited to share his Filipino roots with others through his edible creations and contributions to the menu.

“Living in Sacramento means we’re surrounded by the best ingredients year-round,” Agtina said. “Terra Madre is the perfect chance for us to show love to our farmers. Community is everything in this city, and it’s a chance for us to give back to everyone, with a whole lot of flavor.”

Byron Hughes is another local renowned chef to participating in the weekend event.

Hughes, a classically trained chef with over 16 years of experience, is the head chef at Restaurant XO, an American Chinese food pop-up restaurant.

Hughes and his partner, Mandy Lee, started their own pop-up in February and have been aiming to get their name out there. He said the Terra Madre event is the perfect opportunity to do so.

“They reached out to me to see if we’d be interested in collaborating on something for Terra Madre. I just said yes immediately, without even knowing any details,” Hughes said. “It ended up being this huge, huge opportunity that’s happening there.”

Like Agtina of Good Love, Hughes and Lee’s Restaurant XO will have a space in collaboration with Our Night Market as they participate in the event’s Slow Food experiences, which focuses on exploring coffee, wine, craft beer, cocktails, spirits and street food from across the Americas.

The exhibit allows attendees to see how farmers, chefs and producers are reconnecting food, farming and culture.

“The goal is to highlight local and up and coming chefs and farmers in a way that’s a little bit less traditional and a little bit less, I would say less serious format, which is why the Night Market mindset kind of fits in,” Hughes said.

Hughes said there will be an array of different Asian cultural food options including Chinese, Filipino and Vietnamese options.

“The opportunity is amazing,” Hughes said. “I like to say yes to things, just because I know that every opportunity we can get to feed people and to just touch people and talk to people is a positive thing. What we do is solid. The work that we do and the food that we make, we stand behind it and are very confident in that. So any opportunity to be able to share that with somebody is a great opportunity for us.”

Hughes commended the city for bringing an event of this magnitude to the region calling it “a long time coming.”

“I feel like for something of this scale, especially since we want to call ourselves this “Farm-to-Fork capital” and foodie city, or whatever, you know. Something of this scale that’s globally recognized, globally attended as well as Terra Madre in Italy. I love chefs from California that go to that one. So I’m really excited to see who’s coming here and who’s going to check out Sacramento for a few days. I think this is a long time coming, for sure.”

Friday’s event run through 8 p.m. and continue from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.