Prize Fest Has Officially Taken Over Downtown Shreveport

Prize Fest Has Taken Over Downtown Shreveport.

If you have never experienced Prize Fest you are missing out. Prize Fest is a creative competition and festival that takes over Shreveport, Louisiana every single year. It features film, food, music, and comedy with huge cash prizes and other awards. 2024 is looking different than the post-pandemic Prize Fest's. This year all the festivities take place in one week instead of it being spread out into two weeks.

Mayor Arceneaux addressed the media during a Prize Fest press conference in August and praised the efforts of Prize Fest, "The Louisiana Film Prize, the whole Prize Festival, is such an enormous event for the city of Shreveport. It brings people here. It gives people a really fun thing to do, it brings filmmakers from all over the country and really all over the world to be here, to participate."

Mayor Arceneaux went on to share the goodness of Food Prize. "I believe that Food Prize has been one of the reasons that we have become such a foodie city. There are so many people that have participated in Food Prize that have now opened their own restaurants. We have so many locally owned, very fine restaurants, and it's the result of Food Prize." You can get all the Prize Fest information by clicking here. 

Food Prize 2024 Did Not Disappoint.

Several food lovers gathered at the Remington downtown to celebrate the first night of Prize Fest.

Many consider Food Prize an ultra-premium event. At this event, the six Semi-Finalist chefs teamed up with six Celebrity Mentor Chefs to create amazing dishes for us to try. As Food Prize attendees, we were asked to taste each dish and given tokens to vote for our favorite chef. We were also able to try delicious cocktails made by some of the best bartenders in town these bartenders were battling out for the Golden Shaker Award.

Three Food Prize Finalists were selected by judge and attendee votes.  Chefs Allison Ward, Melvin Nelson, and Stu Dyson took home the Top 3 Finalists spots.

"CONGRATULATIONS to Chefs Melvin Nelson, Allison Ward, and Stu Dyson for taking home the TOP 3 finalist spots! They'll advance on to compete in the BATTLE FOR THE GOLDEN FORK this Saturday at 3pm! This is a FREE and OPEN Prize Fest live cooking event! The competitors will be given a pantry of kitchen staples, a cooking station, a special mystery ingredient and 40 minutes to delivery a stunning dish to the Food Prize judges. Come out and cheer them on! Shout out to all the amazing chef competitors, this was a (very close) competition to remember!"

"Can we talk about the COCKTAILS from tonight's "Come And Get It" Food prize competition?! The level of artistry was UNMATCHED and it was truly anyone's game. Congrats to Ria Townsend for taking home the GOLDEN SHAKER award! If you're wanting to catch the unbelievable energy and excitement that Prize Fest has to offer, we hope you'll join us the rest of the week! There's truly nothing like it, and there's a ton of Prize left."