IE International Food and Music Festival

The freeway version of the Inland Empire is fast food and strip malls; the real one is Vietnamese and Mexican and Filipino and Central American and Lebanese and Ethiopian, all on the same blocks - and this festival puts that whole landscape on one street. A food festival here is genuinely different from one in a more homogeneous city, because the region it samples is genuinely diverse.

Downtown Riverside's celebration of the IE's cultural breadth spreads across the blocks leading to the Mission Inn, with food from the region's communities and live music across multiple stages. Mission Inn Avenue in late July brings the architecture and the heat in equal measure, and the Mission Inn itself is visible from the festival - the kind of backdrop that makes a food festival feel like a cultural occasion rather than a weekend market.

Come hungry, and come willing to eat something you did not know you were going to like. Leave with the full picture of what the Inland Empire actually is. Mission Inn Avenue, Downtown Riverside, July 29th. Schedule and full vendor and performer list at riversideca.gov.