Traverse City region debuts Forest to Fork culinary weekend in May

A 12-seat mushroom cooking class at Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay will be one of the most intimate pieces of Traverse City region’s new Forest to Fork weekend, a spring food-and-wine gathering built around foraging hikes, vineyard walks and seasonal dinners.

Traverse City Tourism is promoting Forest to Fork as part of its Traverse City Food & Wine programming, with the weekend set for May 14-17 across Traverse City and the surrounding region. The event is being billed as a curated weekend celebration, a springtime gathering that ties together land, table and community through local chefs, farmers, artisans and hosts.

That local mix is the point. The lineup is designed to move guests from the woods to the kitchen to the dining room, with guided foraging excursions led by local naturalists, winery tours that focus on terroir and seasonal viticulture, and hands-on cooking classes built around spring and early-summer produce. The format leans hard into what makes Northern Michigan different from larger food festivals: ingredients are not just plated, they are gathered, explained and prepared in the same weekend.

One of the first publicly listed events is Black Star Farms’ “Umami: A Mushroom Cooking Class,” scheduled for May 16 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Inn at Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay. The class is limited to 12 people and includes a shared tasting and small sips of wine, a scale that underscores how reservation-based and small-batch the weekend is expected to be.

Ticket sales began April 6, and organizers are steering visitors toward individual events or curated multi-event packages. Traverse City Tourism says the new weekend is being launched as part of the lead-up to Traverse City Food & Wine in August, and it has compared the feel of Forest to Fork to its earlier holiday activation, The Cheesiest Valentine.

For Grand Traverse County and the wider Traverse City hospitality corridor, the timing matters. May is shoulder season, when spring growth is just returning to orchards, vineyards and forest trails, and the event gives wineries, independent restaurants, guides and small producers a chance to draw visitors before the summer rush. The Michigan tourism calendar also lists Forest to Fork in Traverse City for the same May 14-17 dates, signaling that the region’s food identity is becoming a four-day attraction all its own.