A Food Festival in Chicago

On Sunday, July 1, we made a trip down to the yearly Taste of Chicago in Grant Park. It spanned the full week of July 4th, and the weather was great, and the Park was packed (see Columbus Drive to the right). Actually, it was too great for the tops of my feet, which were baked to a red crisp by the sun. They probably would have gone great with some BBQ sauce.

According to the official website, the TOC started in 1980. This year, there were over 70 restaurants. Prices weren't too bad, although you did have to use the usual ticket system, whereby you buy 11 tickets for $7. We got 22 tickets, and figured out a strategy to exactly use them all.

We surveyed most of the fair, including a place called Pars Cove Persian (see more about that at the bottom, the Festival turned out badly for them). There were really only three places that caught our, eye (see my lamentations on this below).

There's not much to say about what we ate. The story is more in what we didn't eat. For the record, we settled on starting out at Robinson's #1 Ribs, where I got a rib sandwich, that I'm eating on the left, and that was probably the best rib sandwich I ever had. Keren got some mozzarella sticks at some Irish restaurant. These were OK, but not anything to blog home about. The best thing g, in my opinion, was the BBQ turkey leg from Helen's. I have a nice gif animation of Keren eating part of the leg, which I'll post someday. Here's a snapshot to the right. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

The Taste of Chicago was not what I expected. I had hoped for a lot more Mom and Pop joints, with people that are really good at cooking something particular, bringing the food of their culture to sample. There was indeed some of this: Persian, African, Cajun, are a few that I remember. Chicago is known for it's pizza, and there were a ton of pizza places there, which really isn't that novel in Chicago. I thought this was overkill, as was the sheer number of bars (Irish or otherwise) serving their food. Bar food. Whoopee. I'll bet the pizza and bar food occupied at least 50% of the food booths. There were a few Starbucks and beer stands sprinkled in there too. In some ways, this does represent the culinary cross section of Chicago, so it kind of make sense . But it's still a bummer.

My guess is that getting a booth at the TOC is pretty costly. Nothing pops up on the city's website that explains how to get a booth. But if it's expensive, you can bet that most Mom and Pop joints aren't going to make the cut; they're not interested in getting filthy rich as chain establishments. They just make good food. I guess the conclusion is that if you really want to try something different, you have to go find it yourself, or ask my officemate Chris.

The biggest news of the TOC was the food poisoning at Pars Persian Cove: salmonella (see the red guys to the right) was the likely culprit (by the way, it has its own blog). I've seen various numbers that say there are a handful of confirmed cases, and over a hundred people that reported being sick, with numbers as high as 378, according to the Tribune. There are even lawyers trying to cash-in on this unfortunate incident. I wonder how many millions of dollars a few days of diarrhea will get you?

Now the weird thing is that I remember walking by Pars -- it was the only Middle Eastern place at TOC -- and thinking "hummus, mmmmmmmmm, let's come back here". Keren looked at what people were carrying away from Pars and said it didn't look quite right, and vetoed my vote. She's a hummus expert, so I didn't try to override. Thanks wife!! It turns out the health authorities were targeting the hummus specifically at Pars. I'm kind of creeped out by the whole thing. Does Keren have a sixth sense?

I'll be surprised if we go back next year, unless we're really bored. I think Pars has a grocery store, but I'm not sure if the ownership is the same. The one thing that will come of the food festival is that Pars is etched in my mind, and we'll probably definitely visit their grocery store, and maybe check out their restaurant. I'm guessing their salmonella problem will be cleared up, if they don't go broke paying for people's intestinal discomfort.