For two days in October, twelve guest chefs come to The Forge and cook with children. This is the tenth edition of our National Children's Gastronomy Festival, and the theme this year is Food Is Love — what love through food means to you.

Every chef brings one dish that holds a memory: the one made for you when you were sick, the one your family asks for every single year, the one that smells like a kitchen you grew up in. Food carries emotion better than almost anything — comfort, belonging, the people who are no longer at the table. The children, ages 5 to 14, make that dish with the chef, and they hear the story behind it. Not a demonstration from behind a table — they measure, they knead, they taste, they clean up. A child who makes a dish with his own hands eats that dish, and then asks for it at home.

Be a Chef for a Day began in 2015. Ten editions later, the children who stood on stools to reach the counter are teenagers who cook for and with their families.

This festival matters because it shows the power of food, and because it shows the immense capacity children acquire once they have the skills. It also raises crucial funding that keeps essential children's community programs free and accessible to everyone.

That is what your gift does. It pays for the ingredients, the aprons, the equipment and the chefs' stations, and it keeps the door open with no ticket price standing between a family and a kitchen.

For us, food is love.

October 24 and 25, 2026 · The Forge, 3009 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore

Registrations starts September 24th at 7:PM

2026 Be a Chef for a Day - National Children's Gastronomy Festival - 10th Edition

Where Chefs and Kids Cook Together