Taste of Lebanon Festival

Two days of Lebanese cooking, music and dance at Saint Sharbel Church in Raleigh. Entry is free and you pay for food, which is the arrangement you want, because the food is the reason to go.

The kitchen operation behind a festival like this is considerably larger than the venue suggests. Church food festivals run on volunteer cooks producing family recipes at industrial volume over several days of preparation, and the result is generally better than what you can buy in a restaurant the rest of the year.

How to do it properly:

• Go hungry, and go with more than one person so you can split plates
• Saturday runs to 10 p.m., so an evening visit is on the table
• Sunday is the shorter day, noon to 6 p.m., and generally the calmer one
• Bring cash as well as a card

The Saturday evening hours are worth flagging. Most food festivals in this county finish mid-afternoon, which forces everyone into the same lunchtime window. Eleven hours on the Saturday spreads the crowd and makes it possible to arrive after something else.

There is usually dance and live music running through the day alongside the food stalls, and the church setting means the whole thing is walkable in a few minutes rather than spread across a park.

Free to enter both days.