An Alice in Wonderland-themed picnic in Potrero Hill on Saturday invited participants to bring their cake and eat it, too.
Anyone who showed up with a cake was welcome to slap on a name tag, grab a slice and share some love for the sweet treat at Potrero del Sol Park.
Tables were crammed with 180 cakes of all shapes and varieties, including vegan mushroom cake, apricot Swiss roll with buttercream, tres leches, blueberry cheesecake and classic chocolate out of a box.
The event was hosted by wedding planning company Earth and Events along with Elisa Sunga, a UX program manager for Google who took up baking in the early days of the Covid pandemic.
She began posting about her newfound hobby on Instagram under the handle @saltedrye, where she cultivated a following and connected with fellow gourmands.
“I was inspired to host a cake picnic because I wanted to eat a lot of cake and I love community building,” Sunga told The Standard.
A few hundred people RSVP’d for the picnic, but 180 showed up—far more than the 15 or 20 Sunga expected.
Julia Glasser, 25, said she made the trek from Oakland after seeing Sunga post about it on Instagram.
While many food events tend to be small private pop-ups or exclusive tastings, Glasser said she liked how this one was open to anyone who brought a cake of their own.
“I’m a sucker for weird-sounding things and eclectic things I haven’t heard of before,” Glasser said, “so I wanted to try what was unique on the tables.”
In the spirit of all things eclectic, her contribution to the picnic was a lemon-strawberry-basil cake topped with whipped cream.
The sizable turnout has Sanger already cooking up plans for more cake picnics, including one in Los Angeles in June and another in New York in August.
Correction: This story was updated with the proper job title for Google UX Program Manager Elisa Sunga.