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We’d wanted to do it for years, but the timing
just never was right — but then one year my family and I finally took
the plunge. Taste of Chicago is billed as the Midwest’s
largest summer festival and the world’s largest food festival.
Started in 1980 as a one-day replacement for Chicagofest, it has grown into
a behemoth, a 10-day event that last year attracted more than 3.5 million
visitors. Taste of Chicago has more than 70 food vendors and headline music
acts such as John Mayer, Los Lonely Boys, the Black Crowes, and Cheap
Trick.
By almost all counts, Taste of Chicago has been
wildly successful. It’s a big tourist draw, and the revenues it
brings in for the vendors and businesses in Chicago’s Loop are
outstanding. Unfortunately, as one of my dentist husband’s mentors
used to say, success often breeds failure. His point was that dentists who
push hard for a high-volume practice often do well initially but after a
while, when it’s difficult to get an appointment and the dentist and
staff are too rushed and preoccupied to make their patients’ comfort
a priority or listen to their concerns, many patients go elsewhere. That was pretty much our experience at Taste of
Chicago. Heading for Grant Park with high expectations and high spirits, we
were ready for a good time. We’d been to jazz and blues festivals in
the Windy City and always had a lot of fun. This time, however, our
anticipation soon turned into disenchantment. It was scorchingly hot — no surprise in July in
the Midwest, but the concrete expanses shimmered with the heat. What really
made the heat oppressive, though, was the press of bodies — way too
much flesh-to-flesh contact with way too many people. Trying to keep our
family together proved frustrating and almost impossible, especially
because we all kept simultaneously wanting to try things different at
different stands, all of which had horrifyingly long lines filled with
increasingly surly people. Then there was the cost. Though none of the
individual items was particularly expensive, the cost/value ratio was
awfully high. If the food had been outstanding, that might have been OK,
but most of what we had was merely mediocre. That’s probably not a
fair assessment, because we didn’t even come close to sampling
everything available, but after two hours we’d blown through the
substantial amount of cash we’d brought and no one was even close to
being full. At that time our three kids were old enough to have adult
appetites but not old enough to have lost their ability to whine.
We’d planned to spend the entire day there, but shortly after those
two hours we were unanimously in favor of leaving to enjoy some of
Chicago’s many other attractions and foods. Taste of Chicago has spawned similar festivals in
other American cities, such as Detroit, Dallas . . . and Springfield. That
less-than-wonderful experience in Chicago made me less than eager to attend
Springfield’s Taste of Downtown for its first years. I should have
known that its smaller size, along with Springfield’s small-city
ambience, would yield a much friendlier, relaxed ambience. “I know just what you mean,” says Megan
Derrig-Green, event coordinator for Downtown Springfield Inc., when I told
her about my Taste of Chicago experience. “I went once, and it was
almost frightening. People were pushing and shoving; it was hard to
breathe.”
Perhaps because her Chicago experience was similar to
mine, Derrig-Green, with her fellow Taste of Downtown planners, is always
looking for ways to ensure everyone’s comfort and enjoyment. This
year there will be extra space between the food concessions to avoid
crowding.
The planners have made sure that the pricing is easy
to understand, too. Part of the reason it’s easy to overspend at
Taste of Chicago is that the food tickets sold are not an even exchange, so
keeping track of what’s being spent is difficult. At the Springfield
event, a dollar ticket buys a dollar’s worth of food or drink. The
prices are reasonable, too, ranging from $1 to $6, and the items at the
higher end all contain ingredients such as seafood. This July 7 will be the eighth annual Taste of
Downtown Springfield. The lineup of roots music will be headlined by the
Romantics, a Detroit-based group that in the late 1970s and ’80s had
several hits, including “What I Like About You.” The event has
grown to include 22 food vendors. Perennial favorites will be returning, as
well as six newcomers: August, an Italian spin-off of Augie’s Front
Burner; Salute; Terry’s Lunch Box; the Walleye Wagon Café; the
Pasfield House; and Café Rémoulade, a restaurant so new it
hasn’t opened yet. Michael Taylor, formerly of the Bayou Grill, is in
final negotiations for the venture’s location, but he decided to
preview his new restaurant, which will feature Creole and Cajun cuisine, at
the Taste.
Springfield’s signature dish, the horseshoe,
shows up both as a spicy pony shoe (Alamo), and its classic sauce will be
served with both nachos (Boone’s Uptown Grill) and addictive
housemade potato chips (Maldaner’s). Springfield’s other claim
to culinary fame, chilli (that’s the traditional spelling hereabouts)
is less well represented, though Augie’s Front Burner does offer a
chilli dog. Less
adventurous tastes can be satisfied with offerings of hot dogs, hamburgers,
walleye, and pizza, and those wanting to walk on the wilder side can
explore such items as jerk-chicken tacos (Café Brio),
chili-lime-brisket tacos (Sebastian’s Hideout), crawfish
etouffée (Café Remoulade), and corn-and-chorizo chowder (El
Presidente Burritos). Various forms of barbecue can be found at several
stands. There are interesting sweets and drinks both spiked and soft. Taste of Downtown Springfield will run noon to
midnight along Fifth Street between Jefferson and Adams streets. Patrons
can enter the gated area on Fifth and Washington streets at the
intersections with Adams, Fourth, Sixth, and Jefferson streets. Parking
will be available until 1 a.m. in the Old State Capitol underground garage.
Send questions and comments to Julianne Glatz at
realcuisine@insightbb.com.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2007.
