UD's New Festival Puts Dayton’s Food Stories Front and Center
By Alexis Larsen, Dine Out Dayton Correspondent, January 31, 2026
When the University of Dayton launches its first-ever Food and Culture Festival the first week of February, the opening conversation will be led by someone who has spent decades telling Dayton’s food stories.
I was honored to be tapped as the Miami Valley Restaurant Association’s Dine Out Dayton Correspondent and the Dayton Business Journal Dayton Dish food columnist to moderate the festival’s kickoff event, Serving Plates and Serving Stories, a free, public roundtable discussion taking place at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2 at the Roger Glass Center for the Arts Concert Hall.
The opening roundtable will feature Miami Valley Restaurant Association member and Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance Ambassador of the Year Liz Valenti of Wheat Penny, Chef Dane Shipp of Culture, Justin Simmons and Kathleen Roll of Tony & Pete’s and Angie Hsu and Mata Mazursky of Mazu Eats. Together, the panelists represent a wide range of culinary perspectives, from deeply personal food traditions to boundary-pushing contemporary cuisine, and will discuss how food tells stories, builds community and intersects with creativity beyond the plate.
With more than 20 years covering Dayton’s food scene helping to chronicle the city’s culinary evolution, from neighborhood institutions to chef-driven concepts, while connecting food to broader conversations about place, culture and community, this is a conversation that is near and dear to my heart and puts language to something Dayton already lives every day. Food is one of the most democratic art forms we have, it’s how people here connect across neighborhoods, backgrounds and experiences. When chefs, artists and audiences share the same space, culture stops being abstract. It becomes something lived, tasted and talked about together.
The kickoff event opens a weeklong series of public programs that examine food through multiple lenses. Developed by Professor Samuel Dorf, the University of Dayton’s Alumni Chair in the Humanities, the Food and Culture Festival brings together chefs, scholars, artists and community members to explore how food shapes identity, access, memory and belonging across the Dayton region.
“Food defines who we are,” Dorf said. “It’s part of the fabric of our daily lives and our stories — how we celebrate, how we remember, and how we take care of one another. Bringing those conversations into public spaces, alongside art and performance, allows people to see themselves reflected in new ways.”
Midweek programming includes Stories of Growing and Giving: Food, Access and Justice in the Dayton Region, a public conversation focused on food systems and equity, followed by a keynote address by Michael Twitty, the acclaimed food historian, writer, and cultural scholar whose work examines the intersections of race, history, and American foodways. Twitty’s keynote expands the festival’s scope beyond the plate, connecting culinary traditions to larger questions of heritage, power, and social responsibility.
The festival concludes with a fitting finale: a food-centered operatic double feature by Dayton Opera, featuring The Cook-Off and Bon Appétit, performed at the Roger Glass Center for the Arts. The productions transform cooking itself into music and theater, from Julia Child baking a chocolate cake onstage to a contemporary opera set inside a televised cooking competition, reinforcing the festival’s central idea that food is both an everyday ritual and a powerful form of cultural expression.
The honor of moderating the opening conversation feels like a natural extension of a career spent listening to kitchens, dining rooms and communities. Food has always been the most reliable entry point, the place where people arrive ready to share, remember, debate and connect. When food is at the center, the conversation tends to open up quickly, and the most interesting stories always seem to follow.
For more information on all of the events happening during the University of Dayton’s Food and Culture Festival, visit: https://
Alexis Larsen is the Miami Valley Restaurant Association’s Dine Out Dayton Correspondent and is The Dayton Dish food columnist for the Dayton Business Journal. Stay tuned for more articles from Larsen who has been covering local restaurants and food and dining for more than two decades. When she’s not out dining and writing on nights and weekends Larsen serves as the Chief of Philanthropy for Five Rivers MetroParks.