Is Feast Portland a public holiday?

No. It was a ticketed private food festival rather than an official observance, and no US federal instrument creates or recognises it.

Why do event listings still show Feast Portland as upcoming?

The last thing the organisers published to third parties was a notice that the 2022 edition had been postponed and would return in 2023. Travel Portland's listing still carried that promise in September 2026, linking to a website that no longer works.

Is Summer of Feast the same as Feast Portland?

No. Summer of Feast was a smaller programme of three event series run by the same organisation in 2021, not the four-day festival.

Feast Portland

Next celebratedThursday, September 16, 2027

For four days each September, chefs from around the world cooked at events scattered across downtown Portland. The 2019 festival was its last.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated September 2, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATESeptember 16

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYDining

ORIGIN

Individual Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

Mike Thelin and Carrie Welch

FIRST OBSERVED

2012

“Since 2012, Feast has been a love letter to the people, places and things in Oregon.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

It began at the first coffee the two founders had together.

Mike Thelin and Carrie Welch created Feast Portland, and the first festival ran across downtown Portland from 20 to 23 September 2012. Thelin has said the idea came from a coffee the two had in 2011, the first time they met.

Read the festival's own 2012 FAQvia Feast Portland

INTRO

A $16.25 billion rescue that asked for a lighting rig

In the summer of 2021, Feast Portland was applying for a Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, the $16.25 billion rescue Congress built for live events. Then it learned that culinary festivals did not qualify.

The programme had been written for stages. Its test asked an applicant to be staging shows by performing artists as its main business, and to own a public address system and a lighting rig. Seven categories of applicant were eligible, from theatrical producers to zoos, and a food festival was in none of them.

Mike Thelin, one of the festival's founders, learned that in the same week news broke that vaccinated people could still transmit the delta variant. He called the two blows a double-gut punch. The following year he ended the festival for good.

ORIGINS

Feast Portland history

INTRODUCTION

On a Thursday evening in September 2012, a crowd gathered in Director Park in downtown Portland for a sandwich contest. Duff Goldman, once the host of the Food Network's Ace of Cakes, cracked eggs on a grill and handed out what he called Egg McDuffin's. Aaron Franklin had come up from Austin to cook.

The Oregonian's critic put the crowd at about 300 at its high water mark. Naomi Pomeroy of the Northeast Portland restaurant Beast won the judging. It was the first event of the first Feast Portland.

Mike Thelin and Carrie Welch had not built it for the crowd in the park. Thelin later called Feast an excuse to bring the entire food world to Portland. He wanted everyone in Portland's food world to feel like they were part of something bigger.

CHAPTER 01

What it grew into

It worked. A Night Market spread across Zidell Yards on the South Waterfront, under the Tilikum Crossing. An event called Smoked turned Fields Park in Northwest Portland into stainless steel grills and leaping red flames.

Chefs arrived from across the country and around the world. By 2019 the organisers were selling sponsorships on the claim that Feast was the premier food and drink festival in the Pacific Northwest.

CHAPTER 02

The price of a ticket

Not everyone loved it. Willamette Week kept returning to what a ticket cost.

In 2018 the paper wrote that most events sold out well in advance or sat far out of the price range of the common foodie. It pointed at a class in rosé and macramé priced at $160.

CHAPTER 03

Three years of trying

The 2020 festival was called off in May, after Oregon extended its ban on large public gatherings through September. The announcement went out on Instagram.

A smaller Summer of Feast ran in 2021, three programmes in place of a festival. Thelin then tried to restart the real thing for 2022 and could not.

On 22 December 2022 he wrote to subscribers. Feast, he said, succeeded on all counts, and looking back, probably ended when it needed to.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why Feast Portland Matters

HUNGER

About $550,000 for two Oregon hunger charities, by the founder's count.

Net proceeds went to hunger relief from the first year, when the festival's own FAQ named Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon and Share Our Strength as the beneficiaries. By 2020 Mike Thelin put the total raised for that group and Urban Gleaners at about $550,000.

PLATFORM

A national stage for a regional trade

Director Emily Crowley said Portland was already on the culinary map when Feast began, and that what the city did not have yet was a major food festival. What they wanted, she said, was to give the whole culinary community a national platform.

SCALE

No successor has taken the Feast name

Feast has run no festival since 2019, and no successor has taken the name. Reporting the closure, Willamette Week wrote that Feast Portland had been recognised as the largest event in the Northwest devoted to food and drink.

BY THE NUMBERS

Feast Portland by the Numbers

8: Festivals held, 2012 to 2019
18,000+: Attendance in 2018, organiser count
50+: Events in the 2019 programme
$95: Big Feast ticket, 2019 main event

TIMELINE

Timeline

The first Feast Portland

The festival ran from 20 to 23 September at venues across downtown Portland.

Sober chefs cook Zero Proof

Andrew Zimmern called the Zero Proof dinner, cooked by sober chefs, the most important thing he had seen at a food festival in a decade.

The last festival

Feast ran from 12 to 15 September, with the Big Feast at Tom McCall Waterfront Park on the Saturday.

Pandemic cancels the festival

Organisers called it off on 14 May after Oregon extended its ban on large public gatherings through September.

Summer of Feast replaces it

Three small programmes ran instead of a festival, opening on 29 July.

Thelin writes the last letter

On 22 December he told subscribers the festival would not return, in 2023 or ever.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about Feast Portland

Nobody under 21 got in

Every Feast event was 21 and over. The festival's own 2012 FAQ warned that no one under 21 was permitted, including infants and small children in child carriers, and that anyone turned away at the gate would not be refunded.

The town ran out of fernet

For the first festival, Feast invited the London chef Fergus Henderson, expecting him to decline. He came, stayed at every party all weekend, and Thelin remembers the weekend ending with zero fernet left in Portland.

There was a grilled cheese hotline

Chefs and visiting media were each handed a burner phone. Call the number between 11pm and 2am and Tillamook would make a grilled cheese and deliver it anywhere in close-in Portland.

The website kept going without the festival

Two years after Feast ended, feastportland.com was still up, carrying fourteen issues of a Feast newsletter with titles like The Pizza Issue and Portland Coffee Is Better Than You Think.

A national magazine put its name on it

Bon Appetit was credited on Feast's own homepage as the festival's national media partner. Thelin has said that Feast kept the final word on all programming anyway.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe Feast Portland

Give to the hunger groups Feast funded

The festival's net proceeds went to Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon and Urban Gleaners, and both are still working. A donation goes straight to the work those ticket sales paid for.

READ

Read the co-founder's exit interview

Mike Thelin walked Portland Monthly through the whole decision in December 2022, from the pandemic to the federal grant. It is the fullest account of why the festival stopped.

BROWSE

Browse the last programme in the archive

The 2019 festival page survives in the Internet Archive, with its dates, ticket price and event count intact. It is the clearest picture of what a Feast weekend actually contained.

PAIR

Pair a film with dinner at home

In 2021 Feast ran a series called Feast Flicks, billed on its own site as dinner and a movie, Feast style. Cook something, pick a food film, and do the same thing on your own sofa.

VISIT

Visit Tom McCall Waterfront Park

The Big Feast, the main event of the last festival, took over this waterfront park on Saturday 14 September 2019. Standing there is the closest thing left to having gone.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Feast Portland?

1 / 8

Which federal programme was Feast Portland applying for when it learned culinary festivals did not qualify?

Answer

No. The festival ran eight times between 2012 and 2019, and co-founder Mike Thelin announced in December 2022 that it would not return, in 2023 or ever.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

13sources

5primary records

12independently dated

Primary records

Feast Portland2012-06-16

Frequently Asked Questions, 2012

The festival's own FAQ for its first year, giving the dates of 20 to 23 September 2012, the downtown Portland footprint, the 21-and-over admission rule and the two charities that received net proceeds.

View source

Feast Portland2019-08-22

Get Involved 2019

The organiser's own sponsorship, volunteer and ticket page for the final festival, carrying its attendance claim for 2018, the 2019 dates of September 12 to 15, the count of more than 50 events and the Big Feast ticket price.

View source

Feast Portland2020-09-16

Feast Portland homepage, September 2020

The festival's site as it stood in the week the cancelled 2020 edition would have run, showing no 2020 programme at all and crediting Bon Appetit as national media partner alongside the two beneficiary charities.

View source

Feast Portland2025-01-11

Feast Portland homepage and newsletter archive

The last working version of the site, two years after the festival ended, listing the fourteen numbered newsletter issues the organisation published afterwards.

View source

Congressional Research Service2022

SBA Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program (SVOG), report R46689

The reference account of the relief programme: the 16.25 billion dollars appropriated across two statutes, the seven categories of eligible applicant, and the live-venue eligibility test down to its performance space, mixing equipment, public address system and lighting rig.

View source

Additional coverage

Portland Monthly2022-12

Iconic Feast Portland Food Festival Will Not Return

Karen Brooks's question and answer session with Mike Thelin at the moment he ended the festival, covering the federal grant that culinary festivals did not qualify for, the peak attendance figure, the charity total and the 2011 meeting that started it.

View source

Willamette Week2022-12-27

Feast Portland Is Officially Done

Reports the closing letter with further verbatim passages, records the festival as the largest event in the Northwest devoted to food and drink, and traces the 2020 cancellation to Oregon's extended ban on large public gatherings.

View source

Willamette Week2018-09-11

Pig Heads, Strip-Club Sandwiches and Other Tales from Feast, Portland's Most Overindulgent Food Festival

The paper's seventh-year retrospective, carrying its standing criticism of Feast's ticket prices, its South by Southwest framing, and two first-person accounts from Mike Thelin about the first festival and the grilled cheese hotline.

View source

KATU2022-12-22

Feast Portland will not return, co-founder announces

Wesleigh Ogle's report of the closing letter on the day it went out, recording that Feast Portland ran from 2012 to 2019, that the festival traditionally lasted four days, and naming the people the founder thanked.

View source

The Oregonian2012-09-22

Feast Portland 2012: Day one diary

Michael Russell's report from the first event of the first festival, the Sandwich Invitational at Director Park, with the crowd estimate, the winning chef and the charities the 2012 proceeds went to.

View source

Eater Portland2020-05-14

Feast, Portland's Largest Food and Drink Festival, Is Canceled for 2020

Alex Frane's report of the outright cancellation of the 2020 festival, its announcement on Instagram, and Mike Thelin's figure for the money raised for Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon and Urban Gleaners since 2012.

View source

OPB2021-07-31

Feast Portland returns with smaller events and a focus on BIPOC producers

Crystal Ligori's interview with director Emily Crowley about the 2021 Summer of Feast, its three programmes and its charity partner, including Crowley's account of what the festival was created to provide.

View source

Travel Portland

Feast Portland event listing

A listing still live in September 2026 that repeats the organiser's 2022 notice promising a return in 2023 and links to a website that no longer resolves.

View source

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