Eat to the Beat: The Food Lineup at Coachella

Fiona Chandra

The music festival of the year, Coachella, is just over the horizon. But in recent years, there’s more to look forward to at Coachella than the music and the artists. The food scene at the desert festival is just getting better and better. After all, they can’t leave you in the desert with no food and drinks, right?

All guests will have access to the Beer Barn that will serve food and beer from some of L.A.’s crowd favorites including Koreatown’s Beer Belly, Phorage, Starry Kitchen x Button Mash, Top Round Roast Beef and more. General admission guests can also cool down on the Terrace with Afters Ice Cream, Blue Bottle Coffee, Free Range and Sage/Kind Kreme. In the Terrace Yurt, attendees will find treats from Pepples Donut Farm, McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams and Mallow Mallow among others.

The VIP festival attendees have access to even more food purveyors. The VIP-only Rose Garden will boast Guerrilla Tacos, sushi rolls from KazuNori and Superba Food + Bread. Also, at Rose Garden is Unit 120 where chefs and restaurants test out their new food concepts. Among the concepts presented here are LASA by Chad and Chase Valencia on April 15 followed by Shao Kao BBQ from Luther Chen on April 16. Jeremy Fall’s Nighthawk rounds up the first weekend on April 17. The second weekend’s lineup consists of Chef Vartan Abgaryan, Twisted Filipino by Carlo Lamagna and Jeremy Fall again on Sunday.

The Rose Garden is also home to a very special dinner series, Outstanding in the Field. A four-course meal will be prepared by celebrated chefs each night in the Rose Garden complete with a welcome cocktail and a beer or wine pairing. A special part of the international table-to-farm dinner series, Outstanding in the Field at Coachella will feature Chef Antonia Lofaso (Scopa Italian Roots), Top Chef finalist Elia Aboumrad, Nyesha Arrington (Leona), Chris Oh (Hanjip), Kris Morningstar (Terrine), Michael Hung (Viviane), Michael Voltaggio (ink) and many more. Sunday, April 17 will be even more special with a trio of chefs from Mexico including Daniel Ovadia (Nudo Negro, Mexico City), Jose Manuel Baños Rodriguez (Pitiona, Oaxaca) and Francisco Ruano (Alcalde, Guadalajara).

Other VIP areas will have refreshments from Clover Juice, Donut Farm and Three Jerks Jerky along with pop-up restaurants in the main VIP area. The pop-ups offer one of two full-service, seated dining experiences at Coachella (the other being Outstanding in the Field) and are open from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays. This year, there will be three pop-up restaurants featuring some of L.A.’s most popular restaurants and spanning its diverse cuisines including Thai food from Andy Ricker’s Pok Pok LA, Roy Choi’s plant-heavy backyard bbq offerings from Commissary and Ricardo Zarate’s Peruvian food from Rosaliné. You can make a reservation to the pop-up restaurants through OpenTable using this link.

Coachella will take place on April 15-17 and April 22-24 in Indio, CA. Get more information and purchase tickets to Outstanding in the Field at Coachella along with festival packages using this link.