A Year in Food: This Culinary Calendar Is the Ultimate Meal Planner

Some people attend monthly conferences. Others follow their favorite band around the country. But for a true taste of something different, why not travel the world hitting different food festivals at various exotic locations every month on a year-long global food tour? There are certainly worse ways to spend 12 months.

Resolve to eat better in the year ahead with this month-by-month guide to taste-tempting food festivals around North America.

January: Cayman Cookout

Calling the Cayman Cookout on Grand Cayman “the culinary event of the year” is not hyperbole. Not when you’ve got celebrity chefs like Eric Ripert, José Andrés, Emeril Lagasse, Andrew Zimmern and Stephanie Izard cooking up a massive high-end feast at The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman’s picture-perfect Seven Mile Beach in the middle of January.

The event also includes wine and beverage experts, a “barefoot barbecue” night event with live music, an amateur chef cook-off, storytelling, cooking demos, beach games and more. Don’t ask questions. Just go.

February: South Beach Wine & Food Festival

As if spending five days in Miami in February isn’t already attractive enough of an option, throw in the massive food bacchanal that is the South Beach Wine & Food Festival and the call of South Beach becomes too loud to ignore.

With 100+ events taking place at various locations across Miami-Dade and Broward counties, you’ll join 65,000 other guests hungry to see, hear and, of course, taste offerings from the leaders of the hospitality industry.

With a celebrity-rich roster of talent, including Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray, Guy Fieri, Bobby Flay, and many more, events include beach dinners, pizza parties, brunches, pool parties and seminars on how to make an array of eats, from pasta to pie to sushi.

March: Hilton Head Food and Wine Festival

Welcome the spring season on Hilton Head, South Carolina, with the annual Hilton Head Wine and Food Festival, which includes wine seminars, a local chef showdown, live entertainment and plenty of delectable down-home tastings.

The main Public Tasting event includes a gourmet challenge, 250+ wines and the famed waiter’s race, with additional events including a wine stroll, beachside brunch, low country food event with live music at sunset, and a New Orleans cuisine cooking class.

April: Saborea Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico continues to assert itself as the “Culinary Capital of the Caribbean” with the help of Saborea Puerto Rico, a festival focused on local food and personalities.

Events are centered around greater San Juan’s gorgeous Balneario de Carolina beach, and past years have included a sunset festival, Sunday barbecue, wine/food pairings, educational seminars and live concerts. Walk around and taste what’s happening.

May: BottleRock Napa Valley

Napa Valley has long been synonymous with some of the best wines on Earth. But in recent years, it’s also become known for rock — at least when the BottleRock festival comes to town over Memorial Day weekend.

A food fest and music fest mashed into one, BottleRock has all the trapping of a culinary festival, such as gourmet food from Napa Valley’s finest chefs and restaurants paired with five stages of live music and dozens of wine cabanas where you can mingle with your favorite vintners.

There’s also a spa, silent disco, art area and bourbon bar, paired with dozens of musical acts, which in the past included Imagine Dragons, Neil Young, Mumford & Sons, Santana and Pharrell Williams.

June: Food & Wine Classic in Aspen

While Aspen is of course known as one of the world’s premier ski destinations, summer is becoming an increasingly popular time to visit this mountain haven. And with the Food & Wine Classic popping up in downtown Aspen in June, food and wine lovers will have an even harder time staying away.

This event, sponsored by Food & Wine magazine, attracts a more intimate crowd of around 5,000 people who will graze the Grand Tasting Pavilion sampling wines and dishes from around the world paired with stunning mountain scenery. The event also includes cooking demonstrations, parties, panel discussions, brand activations and more.

July: Key Lime Festival

Unlike some of the more fancy, pinky-in-the-air foodie events around the country, there’s nothing pretentious about the Key Lime Festival held over Fourth of July weekend.

As fun-loving and unapologetically weird as Key West itself, this event dedicated to the Key lime pie (which was invented in Key West) features Key lime pie making demonstrations and seminars, Key lime pie eating contests, Key lime cocktails and a Fourth of July fireworks picnic taking place at locations across Key West.

Don’t miss some of the more out-there events, like the Key lime pie drop, during which local residents and festival attendees attempt to drop a Key lime pie from the top of a local lighthouse without damaging the pie. For real.

August: Eat Drink SF

It’s no surprise that a city as food-crazy as San Francisco throws one of the premier foodie events of the year, Eat Drink SF, with a curated selection of dozens of the Bay Area’s finest food, wine and spirits makers all gathered under one roof at a 40,000-square-foot event space

The Midway is in the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood. Meet and eat with the chefs and beverage community, take part in grand tastings, and enjoy cooking demonstrations and beverage classes with elite members of the Bay Area industry, from old-school classics to hotshot newcomers.

September: Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta

Art is everywhere you look in Santa Fe. And the creative vibe that permeates every inch of one of America’s most unique cities fully extends to its food scene, with the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta showcasing the best of the region and beyond at locations across Santa Fe.

Pairing 75 local restaurants with 90 national wineries, the event features cooking demonstrations, wine seminars, winery lunches and dinners, a silent auction and a grand tasting event, as well as additional fun excursions such as a golf outing, bike ride, film festival and Champagne brunch.

October: Hawaii Food & Wine Festival

Billed as “the premium epicurean destination event in the Pacific,” the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival seeks to attract attention to Hawaii’s extraordinary culinary talent while promoting locally grown products.

Featuring chefs from across Hawaii and around the world, the festival’s October events take place on the Island of Hawaii over the course of a single weekend (later weekend-long events on Oahu and Maui follow separately). Festivalgoers may experience a wide range of culinary programming, including a Indigenous cuisines tasting, kid-centric culinary adventures, wine tastings and more.

November: Cornucopia

There’s more to Whistler than just skiing and mountains (although both of those remain phenomenal.) There’s also food. Good food. And lots of it.

Dive into the finest tastes from the Pacific Northwest and beyond at Cornucopia, Whistler’s premier, 11-day celebration of food and drink. Fresh ideas and inspiration are as important as the tasting events here, and drink seminars, chef lunches and winemaker dinners help make this festival a must-visit.

Past events have included live comedy, a spa bubble bath, a silent disco and an art museum party at locations across Whistler.

December: Palm Beach VegFest

By the time December rolls around — with your holiday feasting schedule in full-on overdrive mode — it might be time to try something a little different.

Palm Beach VegFest brings at least four large-scale, all-vegan events to South Florida every winter. Events are held in West Palm Beach’s Meyer Amphitheatre and Boca Raton’s Mizner Park Amphitheater, and the themes change each year.

Walk in a skeptic. Walk out a convert. Or just hang out with friends and play lawn games or browse the vendors at this laid-back, free event.