Taste of Rio Was Always a One-Day Festival. This Year, Rio Needed Ten.

For three years running, Taste of Rio fit inside a single Sunday afternoon. The second annual event ran from 2 to 6 p.m. on a Sunday in late September 2024, and the third annual followed the same shape a year later. Four hours, one boardwalk, a stretch of restaurants pouring $5 tasting tickets into a crowd that showed up, ate, and went home.

This year the event needed ten days instead of four hours. Rio's own announcement calls it "NEW Taste Restaurant Week," running September 18 through 26, before the format folds back into the familiar Sunday festival on September 27 from 2 to 6 p.m. That is not a marketing flourish. It is Rio admitting, in its own scheduling, that one afternoon can no longer hold everything that has opened along that boardwalk since the last time anyone tried to sample it in a single sitting.

What actually changed

The mechanics split cleanly into two different events, and knowing the difference matters if you are planning your week.

Rio Taste Week, September 18 through 26, is not ticketed. It is nine days of participating restaurants running their own chef-crafted menus, happy hour specials, signature cocktails, and desserts on their normal service hours. You walk in, order off a limited-time menu, and pay your regular check. This is the low-friction version, the one you can do on a Tuesday after work without planning around anyone else's schedule.

The Sunday festival, September 27, is the ticketed version everyone remembers from prior years. It runs 2 to 6 p.m. along the lakefront, it is cashless, and food and drink selections are sold in $5 increments through Eventeny. A VIP package adds three tasting tickets, a limited-edition giveaway, and access to a VIP lounge that opens an hour early with a complimentary cocktail. Ticketing tents sit near Copper Canyon Grill and the Boardwalk Stage, and parking in Rio's garages and open lots is free.

The guest list is the real story

Here is where the ten-day format earns its keep. Compare who actually shows up.

(Sources: Visit Montgomery's 2025 vendor rundown and Eventeny's 2026 listing.)

A few things jump out. Silver Diner and Sportrock, both fixtures on last year's list, are absent from this year's confirmed roster. Charley Prime Foods didn't close, it rebranded to Charley Chesapeake Chophouse & Bar, so if you're looking for the old name on a menu board you'll want the new one instead. And a run of names that weren't on the boardwalk at all last September, Kareem's Lebanese Kitchen, Han Spot, Kung Fu Tea, Mason's Famous Lobster Rolls, Dave & Buster's, and Fantasticks, are now part of the tasting lineup.

Kareem's is the clearest example of why one Sunday stopped being enough. The restaurant, led by Chef Rachid, opened at 212 Boardwalk Place in the space that used to be Bach to Rock, and it's serving hummus, mezze, shawarma, and falafel alongside Lebanese wines and desserts like baklava and pistachio ice cream. It has been open for a matter of weeks. If you last visited Rio for Taste of Rio in 2025, Kareem's simply didn't exist yet, and neither did several of the other names now on your ticket.

What to do during Taste Week itself

Rio Taste Week rewards a different kind of planning than the Sunday festival does. Because nothing is ticketed and nothing requires a reservation ahead of time, it's the better window for actually sitting down and eating a full meal rather than grazing small plates in a crowd.

A few ways to use the nine days without overthinking it:

• Pick one restaurant you've never tried and one you haven't been back to since last year's festival. Kareem's fits the first category for almost everyone right now.
• Go on a weeknight. Restaurant Week specials run the full nine days, so there's no reason to fight festival-day crowds for the same menu.
• If you're near the carousel end of the boardwalk, stop by Sip, a family-run dirty soda and mocktail stand that opened recently next to Bear's Shaved Ice. It's not part of the ticketed festival, but it's new enough that plenty of longtime Rio regulars haven't spotted it yet. The stand is run by Mindy Merrill with her husband Tyler and their two teenagers helping out, and it's a fast, easy stop if you're walking the lake with kids.

Sunday, September 27: the logistics that actually matter

If you're doing the ticketed festival, a little planning saves you time standing in line. The event is cashless, so bring a card. Tickets are sold in $5 increments both online and at tents near Copper Canyon Grill and the Boardwalk Stage, and each participating restaurant sets its own ticket price per item, so a slider or a dessert might run one ticket while a signature cocktail runs two. Parking is free in Rio's garages and surface lots, which matters more than it sounds like it should once a few thousand people show up on the same afternoon.

The confirmed 2026 vendor list, per Eventeny, includes:

• Auntie Anne's / Cinnabon
• BurgerFi
• California Pizza Kitchen
• Charley Chesapeake Chophouse & Bar
• Dave & Buster's
• Donut Chew
• Fantasticks
• Guapo's Cantina & Grill
• Han Spot
• Kareem's Lebanese Kitchen
• Kung Fu Tea
• Mason's Famous Lobster Rolls
• Miss Toya's Southern Kitchen
• Muse Paintbar
• Nando's PERi-PERi
• True Food Kitchen
• Yard House

Making a full afternoon of it

If you're bringing the family and food is only half the plan, Rio's lakefront gives you somewhere to spend the rest of it. Paddleboats run on the water for anyone who wants a different view of the boardwalk. The carousel and the playground sit right along the lake for younger kids. Muse Paintbar, which is also on this year's festival vendor list, runs paint-and-sip sessions if you want to sit down for a while between tasting stops. None of that requires a festival ticket, and all of it is there on any Saturday or Sunday you happen to be at Rio, festival or not.

What this year's format really tells you is that Rio's restaurant turnover has outpaced the old one-day model. A single Sunday afternoon used to be enough to taste what the boardwalk had to offer. This year it took ten days, a rebranded steakhouse, a Lebanese restaurant that didn't exist a month ago, and a dirty soda stand nobody's festival ticket even mentions to actually cover it.

If you're the kind of Gaithersburg resident who tracks these shifts because you like knowing your own city, that instinct is worth something beyond a good Sunday. The same pattern of turnover and reinvestment along a single corridor is often the clearest early signal of where a neighborhood's value is heading next. When you're ready to talk about what that means for your street, RKL Properties is happy to have that conversation. Let's Connect.