Burning Man is a temporary community.
For eight days, festival attendees create their own living spaces, supplying for themselves and giving away anything they don’t need. Porta Potties are available but all other waste leaves with you. In this inhospitable environment where the only things for sale are ice and coffee, excessive water intake and consumption of salty foods are necessary to keep electrolytes in check. Combined with a decrease in appetite from the heat and an increase in dusty wind, regulating when and what you eat is tricky–but anything is possible in Black Rock City.
Backlot Burners
Burning Man is no typical camping trip full of trail mix and granola bars. You can eat better here than you would on any given day in the civilized world. Stock up on frozen burgers, hot dogs, lunch meat, bread and non-perishables such as potato chips, beef jerky, nuts and dried fruit. It’s crucial to snack throughout the day, since most of your time is spent exploring the endless horizon. You’ll probably only ever eat one complete meal a day, but when you’re sun-baked and starving? Any edible is a welcome treat.
RV DIYs
If you plan your meals ahead of time, you won’t have to worry about them out on the playa. Time can be spent changing costumes and riding “art cars” instead. Before you head out to Black Rock City, spend a couple of days in your kitchen and freeze small portions of things like sauces, marinated chicken or homemade soup. When it’s time to eat at the festival, just defrost your frozen goodies and throw them in a pan. Rid yourself of worries about prepping, dirty dishes and excess waste. A little effort and some Tupperware will prevent all that raw meat and produce from spoiling your trip.
Feed the Artists
By linking artists and theme camps to create a community based around food, this resource organization facilitates an experience of mutual nourishment and gratitude. If you’ve been working all week cutting and stacking lumber to build the Man, someone wants to feed you. The organization also hosts a refrigerator truck to release you from the burden of perishable foods.
“Chefs are pushing limits of what food is considered to be on the playa,” explained Melissa Cohen, a volunteer at Feed the Artists. “Having an opportunity to share food goes a really long way.”
Kitchen Hosts
In Black Rock City, everyone is pretty gung-ho about creating a small community of people who all want to eat, sleep and work together. Troy Camp, named for the 50-foot tall, 28-ton Trojan horse (built and funded entirely by over thirty volunteers) that stands nearby, went with the full-fledged idea of living units, a 2,200-gallon water tank, evaporation pond, diesel generator and propane tanks. Using a shipping container as the kitchen’s structure, Anthony “Cougar” Rocco and other volunteers calculated portions and cooked up everything from eggs and bacon to poached salmon and asparagus. According to Rocco, the main concern if you stay in a larger camp is “breaking off into smaller pockets or keeping that collective together.”
Catering Connoisseurs
Theme camp Red Lightning did things a bit differently and hired an event-catering company to deal with the setup and breakdown of their kitchen, as well as the overbearing heat and limitless dust. Krishna Kitchen, which has immense amounts of experience in the art of vegetarian Indian cooking, provided three meals per day for 250 people. By paying a camp fee to stay here, campers can stop worrying about their next meal and instead, focus energy on meditation and the Bhakti practice.
All kitchens are required to obtain a Nevada State Health Division permit if providing food for more than 125 people, but that shouldn’t stop you from finding endless amounts of treats all throughout the event. The mobile Dust City Diner serves grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee on fine china; the art instillation known as the French Quarter bakes fresh beignets every morning. Most camps host public bars—but of course, you have to bring your own cup.
The range of available nourishment at Burning Man is huge in scope; the attendees may be eclectic and the living situations less than desirable, but each and every delicious, unexpected bite is experienced by all in a truly gratifying and communal way.
Photos by Alison Faith, TWITA2005 and Pamela Birchard.
