What Is Pesto Festo?

Pesto Festo artwork

Short answer
Pesto Festo is the name of several US festivals based around everyone's favourite sauce. California-based Jacuzzi Family Vineyards in Sonoma County hosts one of the biggest.

Long answer
Jacuzzi Family Vineyards' Pesto Festo celebrates everything related to basil and pesto. In addition to tasting numerous types of pesto, visitors can enjoy artisanal bread, pasta, cheese, olive oil, and plenty of live music and entertainment.

Numerous other Pesto Festo events are dotted around the US. Tampa's Sweetwater Organic Farm hosted its inaugural Pesto Festo in 1993 and has been pulling in crowds ever since. The event celebrates the end of Florida's planting season, and volunteers harvest all the basil used for their pesto-pasta banquet the morning before. Guests can enjoy live music, seminars, and plenty of family-friendly fun alongside pesto.

Missouri-based Ferguson Farmers Market used to run their own Pesto Festo, which featured gardening demos, live music, and a pesto cook-off. Among some of the winning recipes were pesto popsicles made from basil, spinach, pine nuts, and vanilla yoghurt.

Slow Food Tennessee Valley runs its own Pesto Festo at the Ironwood Studios. The main event is the pesto competition, divided into three categories: traditional pesto, creative pesto, and people's choice pesto. The event brings locals together to celebrate the valley's regional foods.

Slow Food Knoxville used to run a Pesto Festo at Organicism Farms in Seymour. At this event, fifteen volunteers prepared a six-course meal for over 100 guests featuring pesto from the nearby Tomato Head restaurant.

Saratoga Community Garden held a Pesto Festo in 2021, where they served a simple and elegant harvest dinner to raise funds for the 17-plot gardens, which residents can lease.

Manna Gum Community House's first Pesto Festo was held in Foster's Main Street in January 2021. It was so popular that by 11 a.m., the restaurant sold out of pesto and had to close early.