What was the Scottsdale Culinary Festival?
For about four decades, April in Scottsdale meant the Scottsdale Culinary Festival. It started as a fundraiser for the city’s new arts center and became the Valley’s big spring food event, with chef dinners at the resorts, wine tastings, cookbook authors, cooking demonstrations and a two-day picnic. It was run by volunteers, and the money went to the arts.
The organizer was the Scottsdale League for the Arts, founded in 1978 as the Scottsdale Men’s League to raise money for capital improvements at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, which had opened on October 23, 1975. Its answer was food. By 2000 the festival filled five days in April, and the League said it drew more than 60,000 visitors and more than 100 restaurants, resorts and caterers.
It is over. The last festival the League produced ran on April 13 and 14, 2019, at the Civic Center. For 2020 the League handed direction of the festival to Scottsdale Arts and the event company R Entertainment. Their one-day relaunch was set for April 18, 2020. COVID-19 postponed it, and in 2023 the festival’s website announced that the event “will not be returning in 2023.” As of this writing (fall 2026) there has been no festival since 2019, and the festival’s web address now forwards to Scottsdale Arts.
What it was like
The festival changed shape over the years, and the League’s archived websites show three distinct versions.
The festival week, 2000s. In 2000 it ran April 12 to 16. By 2004 the 26th festival covered six days and ten events. Tuesday was “Feasting with the Authors,” with cookbook writers and paired wines at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, at $75 a person. Wednesday was the National Culinary Student Competition Awards Dinner at the Hyatt Regency at Gainey Ranch, now the Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, with proceeds to the Scottsdale Boys and Girls Club. The League’s own description from 2006 lists a black-tie progressive dinner, reserve wine tastings, cooking demonstrations by national chefs and a two-day picnic. The League said the festival had about 100 restaurants, resorts and caterers taking part, and it drew more than 50,000 visitors that year.
The 2011 program. The 33rd festival, April 5 to 10, 2011, shows the format at full stretch:
- a kickoff party at the W Scottsdale;
- the 20th Arizona Culinary Hall of Fame, an invitation-only reception at the Le Cordon Bleu college’s Technique Restaurant;
- a Chef Tribute Dinner and a Friends of James Beard Dinner;
- a Chocolate & Wine Experience at Degree 270 at Talking Stick Resort;
- Cooks & Corks and the two-day Great Arizona Picnic on the weekend;
- chef wine dinners, a Wine Country Brunch and a Best of the Fest finale.
The League put attendance that year at nearly 40,000.
The last one, 2019. By 2019 the festival was a weekend on the Civic Center: April 13 and 14, about 35 restaurants, three stages with more than 20 bands and the new wave band Berlin headlining Saturday, a Four Peaks beer garden, a wine garden and a spirits lounge, and two days of cooking demonstrations. The League’s president, Glenn Azzari, counted nearly 30,000 visitors. The Civic Center’s rebuilding had started that winter, and construction of the Drinkwater Bridge and Underpass ran through the grounds. The League planned to cover the two bridges over the work with posters from all 41 years of the festival.
Who it helped
The money’s path changed with the League. For about 15 years, by the League’s account, proceeds went to capital improvements at the Center for the Arts. In 1992 the League started a grant program for arts education and scholarships for culinary students. In 2002 it opened competitive grants to other nonprofits. Its grantee lists for 2005–06 and 2008–09 run from Childsplay, Ballet Arizona and the Phoenix Symphony to Scottsdale Artists’ School and the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale. In 2018 it gave $87,000 to 25 organizations. Azzari said in 2019 that the festival produced 60 to 70 percent of what the League raised each year.
How it ended
The festival’s decline shows up in the organizers’ own numbers. The League counted more than 60,000 visitors in 2000, more than 50,000 in 2006, nearly 40,000 in 2011 and nearly 30,000 in 2019. Its revenue, from the IRS filings collected by ProPublica, ran above $1 million a year in fiscal 2012 through 2014 and was about $360,000 in 2015 and 2016.
After the 2019 festival the League stepped back. For 2020 the festival site announced that Scottsdale Arts and R Entertainment, the Scottsdale producer behind the Arizona Taco Festival, would put on “the 42nd annual Scottsdale Culinary Festival” on Saturday, April 18, 2020. It would be “the first year of the event under new leadership,” and “the reinvigorated Culinary Festival is under the direction of Scottsdale Arts.” The new version was a single day, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., billed as a “lifestyle event” with food, fashion, music and dance, and a goal of zero waste. Advance general admission was $12, children 12 and under were free, and there was a $42 “Yacht Party” and a $125 Premier Pass. The League remained a partner. Azzari called it the festival’s “42-year legacy” continuing “in a modernized format.”
Then the pandemic arrived. By 2021 the festival site said “EVENT POSTPONED,” and it still did in mid-2022. By September 2023 it said “This event will not be returning in 2023,” adding that Scottsdale Arts looked forward to “bringing a diverse variety of events to the newly renovated Scottsdale Civic Center in the near future.” The League’s own website, last updated in 2021, still says it looks forward “to returning to the Arizona culinary scene in 2023.” Its last IRS return covers the year ending July 2021. The historian Joan Fudala now lists the festival among Scottsdale’s departed institutions.
The dates that don’t agree
The festival’s start is less certain than its end. The League always dated it to 1978, the year the Men’s League was formed, and in 2019 Azzari said it “was started 41 years ago.” But the League also numbered its festivals: the 2004 festival was the 26th, 2011 marked “the 33rd year,” the 2019 festival was promoted as the 41st, and the 2020 one as the 42nd. Counted back, those numbers put the first festival in 1979. Fudala gives 1978 in one column and 1977 in another. Some accounts describe the first festival as a small indoor event at the Center; we have not found a primary source for that. A program, ticket or Scottsdale Progress story from the first spring would settle both questions. The Scottsdale Public Library’s local-history collection is the place to look.
Why it mattered
The Culinary Festival was a charity fundraiser, not a promoter’s event, and for four decades it put Valley resort kitchens, restaurants and wineries in front of the public in one week each spring, with the proceeds going to the arts. It also showed how a volunteer booster group could build a civic event and then fail to keep it going. The League’s fortunes rose and fell with the festival, and when the festival weakened, the League had little else. The arts organization the festival was founded to support ended up taking it over, and then letting it go.