Hey Stamford! Food Festival returns — and expands
STAMFORD — With summer fast approaching and COVID-19 event restrictions in Connecticut becoming a thing of the past, Stamford residents have another item to add to their social calendars.
The Hey Stamford! Food Festival will take over Mill River Park for a fourth year this August after canceling its 2020 festival because of the pandemic. And this year, the event will expand to a second weekend.
“We decided early in the year to start planning with our fingers crossed that we would be able to host our festival this year,” Ilario Altamura of Parachute Concerts said. The Stamford-based company helps run the festival with Hey Stamford! founder P.J. Kennedy. “We saw that last summer was pretty good for outdoor events. So, we were confident that later in the summer, we would have a chance to produce our annual festival.”
“It’s business as usual with a lot more excitement around it,” Kennedy said.
The event is scheduled to run from Thursday, Aug. 12 to Sunday, Aug. 15, and again from Thursday, Aug. 19 to Sunday, Aug. 22. Early aughts rapper Nelly — known best for songs like “Hot in Herre” and “Ride Wit Me” — will headline the festival on its first Saturday evening, but the food might be the real star of the show.
Altamura and Kennedy plan to bring back familiar Hey Stamford! staples like a beer garden run in partnership with Norwalk’s Blind Rhino Sports Bar. But the roster features new
additions like a Friday night pizza party, a familyfriendly ice cream event, and a day of food demonstrations hosted by chef Christian Petroni, formerly of Harbor Point’s Fortina.
Expanding the festival was always part of the plan, Altamura said. Still, the year’s hiatus gave them even more reason to grow. “Since we missed out on last year, we figured now we need to make up for an extra weekend,” he said, adding that the event has grown 25 percent since its first festival in 2017.
The Hey Stamford! festival isn’t the only summer event making a comeback in 2021.
The Downtown Special Services District indicated that other hallmark warmweather events would be making a return this year in the late summer and early fall. DSSD President David Kooris said it would host its annual concert series, Alive@Five, in September this year instead of July.
Even though Gov. Ned Lamont in April announced he would lift all remaining COVID restrictions on businesses start ing May 19, further guidance on the future of big get-togethers is still to come. The state Department of Public Health is set to issue guidelines on large-scale events on that day. State guidelines or not, Altamura and Kennedy said they plan on following any recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still in place by then.
In light of the CDC’s announcement Thursday that fully vaccinated people can go maskless in most places, Altamura expects people to be comfortable attending large events by August, especially one outside.
“I’m already starting to see it. People are starting to feel more comfortable going out,” he said. “I only think as the weather gets better, and people are going to be outdoors more, it’s going to definitely feel back to normal by August.”
Tickets for the Hey Stamford! Food Festival are officially on sale. Individual event tickets cost between $15 and $30, while an eight-day pass to all the events costs $100.