By Patrick McDonagh

“This year it got crazy,” says Ignite event coordinator Rachel Strutt. “It was so popular from last year we just created a Facebook event page, didn’t send out a single press release, and within 24 hours thousands of people had already said they were coming.”

Strutt’s recorded interview is hardly audible over the August 15 Union Square attendees and an El Salvadorian mariachi’s chirping trumpet chords.

Authentic cuisine representing food culture from Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, India, and the Caribbean provided evening fuel for attendees surrounding the fenced-off Union Square street stage. “It has always been a night festival with a focus on food,” Strutt explains, this year with a main stage thematic performance. Orange hanging lanterns match the giant painted tiger face greeting guests of the square. “This year we teamed up with the Boston Circus Guild,” said Strutt. “We thought fire performers would be a great match with the event.”

The Ignite performances consisted of salsa dancers, glow-in-the-dark hula hoopers, mariachi, and the School of HONK volunteer band. An enigmatic group called the Butoh Cheerleaders wandered the event in slow motion; spraying the air arbitrarily with mist bottles while dressed as grotesque gothic cheerleaders. The cheerleaders performed expressionless to the general confusion of the audience.

Gracie’s spicy gochujang chocolate ice cream with blow-torch fired marshmallows was dessert prelude to an equally fiery evening climax: gas lit props wielded by Boston Circus Guild performers that drew the majority crowd.

Spectators perched on guardrails in attempt to see the show. Those tall enough to view over the crowd, or small enough to fit on shoulders, watched flame, juggling and dance acts to the beat of energizing, base-heavy, electronic music.

The night’s atmosphere and show theme was an ArtsUnion collaborative effort. “Cultivation, celebration, and support of the square’s diverse food landscape” are Somerville Arts Council’s event goals each year.

The now ten-year ArtsUnion program is designed to stimulate the cultural economy of Union Square is a partnership in effort to achieve these goals. Strutt clarifies reasoning for a food centric event hosted by the Arts Council: “Food is a doorway to culture. If you conceive of food as creative expression, cultural expression, you are celebrating diversity in Somerville.”

Mother-son culinary team Estela Calzada and Elias Lopez celebrate their food’s diversity at Ignite, utilizing the Mexican delicacy edible corn fungal disease, huitlacoche, in traditional recipes.

Estela Calzada’s recipes derive from life as a stay at home mom in Mexico City, providing for her son Elias Lopez. When a close member of the family who was hospitalized with amnesia – his whereabouts unknown to Calzada or Lopez for five years – resurfaced in the United States, Calzada left Mexico City to care for him bringing Lopez, then nine years old, with her.

An immigrant Somervillian chef with lacking English vocabulary, Calzada’s is part of a community demographic Rachel Strutt and the Somerville City Arts Council are hoping to engage and support through their culinary entrepreneurship program. Strutt describes a Mexican pop-up kitchen at the storefront of Kitchen Inc., where their culinary classes are also taught.

“We opened it up to the public to sit down and have an authentic Mexican meal like you would have at someone’s house in Mexico. Then we started doing more popup kitchens. For someone like Estela, this is what she wants to do,” Strutt says. “She wants to open up a restaurant so we thought we should start a culinary entrepreneurship program, so we did. We work with many different city departments like Economic Development, SomerViva translation outreach, and then we also reached out to local businesses. Immigrants who have gone on to open successful businesses speak to our students. We also bring people in to talk about permitting and marketing and the importance of getting serve safe health certifications. We started a program and had a series of eight classes, and then we had a group final project, which was an open kitchen. You could walk in and eat your way around the planet. We had someone from Somalia, someone from India, Someone from Mexico, Someone from Venezuela, Colombia, and someone from Brazil. So now we are trying to support these people and get them to sell their food at festivals.”

With enough capital from vending events like Ignite, Calzada and Lopez have future plans for a fine dining Mexican restaurant.

“If we could have a location for people to test out business models, I think we could help cultivate, support, and hopefully create new immigrant owned food businesses in Somerville,” says Strutt. “I also think food helps tell a story. It creates a sense of place, so I hope by our small part in food programing that is what we’ve done.”

Homemade tostadas and chipotle sauce communicates Calzada’s love of cooking with hungry Ignite attendees, their taste not impeded by language barrier. Her son translates her motivations for cooking. “The best feeling for her is when people tell her the food is good or it tastes amazing, and she sees them enjoying it.”

Calzada’s next pop-up kitchen will be breakfast themed serving chilaquiles with eggs or meat and beans on September 12 at Somerville’s Kitchen Inc., 201 Somerville Ave.

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