— Photos by Kayla Sharpe

By Kayla Sharpe

Several groups and families gathered at Union Square to celebrate a night centered around international culture and food at the Ignite Festival on Saturday.

The event included activities like life-sized board games, face painting, and hands-on crafts such as lantern making. Throughout the event, appearances were featured by the Flutterby Faeries, Chels Errante, Qatherine, Flor, Circe Rowan, Ethan Rosman, Bonny Chen, and Consuelo.

In the early part of the festival, there were food demonstrations from restaurants featured in Nibble Kitchen, an outlet for entrepreneurs to highlight their international cuisine. Festivalgoers had the opportunity to try the foods shown at the vendor’s tents during the event.

In the Nibble Kitchen demonstration, vendor Edwin Orellana showed how he makes Salvadorian pupusas, featured at his restaurant, Dos Manos Kitchen. “This makes me so happy,” he said. To him, being able to sell his pupusas in this space is, “A dream coming true.”

There were a variety of international vendors like Carolicious Venezuelan Food, Taquisimo Tacos, and Nagomi Bento– all from Nibble Kitchen. Other vendors included Machu Picchu, Masala Square, Gracie’s Ice Cream, Union Square Pizza, Jana Grill, and Mineirao.  

For the locally owned Armenian restaurant, Jana Grill & Bakery, this was their first time at the Ignite Festival. They thought it was a thoughtful way to present themselves to the community.

“I will say that people love it,” founder Suren Keryan said about their food. “Everyone comes to try, and we give them samples. They always come back.”

To add some entertainment to the food provided, Masala Square had a curry-eating competition between five lucky participants.

Throughout the festival, performances were featured in the fire square in the Union Square parking lot. Cultural performances were featured from groups such as KS Dance Studio performing traditional Haitian dances, Ten Hill Morris, Latin dance group MetaMovements, the Afro-Brazilian Sinha Capoeira Performance Group, and Gund Kwok Asian Women’s Dance Troupe, who showed us a never-before-seen lion and dragon dance.

To close the Ignite Festival, the Boston Circus Guild gave a spectacular fire performance, which brought the audience together in amazement.