Tradition

One food that is particularly special to me is sushi, since there are no festivals in my area that I am familiar with. The local customs surrounding how sushi is prepared is by cutting raw fish and rolling it up in seaweed along with a sticky layer of rice. It must be eaten fresh and it is usually eaten in one bite with the use of chopsticks (or with your hands I guess, if you can't eat with chop sticks).
People attending this event for the first time would learn that Japanese people commonly eat raw sea food ranging from tuna to eel to crab combined with cream cheese or some vegetables, wrapped in sea weed and of course rice because they are big on eating rice as well. Japanese culture is one of the few that actually eat raw food.
When it comes to food, describing a dish as "traditional" would be if it was originated and eaten from a particular country (sushi being a traditional food in Japan). Simply describing people's eating prefrences however would be like saying how Japanese people simply prefer eating raw food that doesnt necessarily come from their cultural background.