April 18-20, 2023 | Napa, CA
Summit Overview
Join us on April 18-20, 2023 as The Culinary Institute of America will stage a ground-breaking conference, the Global Plant-Forward Culinary Summit. Held at the CIA at Copia facility in downtown Napa, CA, we will welcome 300+ chefs, foodservice operators, and experts in food, flavor development, cooking, agriculture and food production, media, and food system transformation from around the world.
The Global Plant-Forward Culinary Summit is a CIA strategic leadership conference inspired by the college’s long-running Worlds of Flavor International Conference & Festival as well as Menus of Change, a joint initiative of the CIA and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Nutrition. The summit will be wall-to-wall cooking demos and culinary strategy discussion—all based on the evidence-based framework of optimal innovation embodied in the 24 Principles of Healthy, Sustainable Menus of the CIA-Harvard Chan School Menus of Change Initiative. It will also be underpinned by such related resources as the Menus of Change Protein Flip and Plant-Forward by the Numbers.
The summit will feature innovative chefs and masters of traditional cuisines from around the world and across the United States, plus sector experts from full-service restaurants to contract foodservice.
“Excellent program topics and speakers propel the plant-forward culture in all sectors of the food and agricultural industries.”
A strong focus on innovation will build on the CIA’s targeted development and incubation of The Blend (blended meat-mushroom burgers) and more recent Pulses of Change initiative (elevating legumes as plant protein), and will ask: what other iconic, transformational menu items and menu categories are waiting to be developed and brought to market?
It will take many paths to get us to a health-promoting, environmentally sustainable food system for the planet in the coming years; accordingly, the summit will invite dialogues between chefs, tech innovators, and manufacturers as well.
Please join us for a high-energy, high-flavor, immersive culinary odyssey and series of strategic dialogues at the intersection of sustainability, health, and the future of American and global menus. Flavor hunters welcome!