Taste of Chicago is an outdoor food festival that showcases several of Chicago's diverse dining options. It claims to be the world's largest food festival and is held in Grant Park which was only a short walk from our hotel on Michigan Ave.
Admission to Taste of Chicago is free which was right up to my alley. You just bought tickets to be able to sample the food. 14 tickets cost $10 and samples of most everything were about 5 to 6 tickets. Besides a sampling at each restaurant, there was also plate option for 10-12 tickets. Drinks were about 7 tickets which could also be bought using your credit/debit card. I bought 28 tickets which gave me about 4 to 5 samples.
When I think of the World's Largest anything, I expect it to be HUGE. I was disappointed in the size of Taste of Chicago. I think was expecting a lot more restaurants. It was really only 2 good city blocks of restaurants down one side of the street. There were 34 5 day Restaurants that were there all 5 days and about 16 Pop Up Restaurants which were only there a day or 2. Besides the booths, there were 16 food trucks around the area as well. I only saw a handful of them. Maybe it didn't seem like a lot there but looking back at the list -- that's a lot of food.
It was hard to decide what I wanted to use my tickets on. I ended up having a variety of foods
First up was a 1/2 a burger from Billy Goat Tavern... I wasn't impressed. I'm hoping it's because it wasn't as fresh as it would be if I ate it at the restaurant. It's like any other burger.
While Andrea ate some Deep Dish Pizza (ewww), I had a salted caramel chocolate puff from Puffs of Doom. I didn't find any napkins and that thing was messy. Being the Wisconsin girl, it seriously lacked cream. It wasn't bad and a very nice sweet treat.
Andrea and I then decided to split a macaroni and cheese grilled cheese sandwhich from Doom Street Eats. It wasn't bad... BUT I discovered that I am a traditionalist and my mac and cheese and grilled cheese need to be separate.
We had some gelato from Cafe Gelato -- peanut butter with brownie chunks. That stuff was amazing. I could eat a whole pint of it.. it just needed more brownie chunks in my opinion
Lastly Andrea got a pulled turkey slider from Oak Street Beach Cafe -- which was amazing -- while I decided to have an empanada from Beat Kitchen. I should have kept walking to find the toasted ravioli. My empanada tasted like dirt. I took one bite an threw the rest away. Severely disappointed by it.
Some of the booths, will sing and dance to get you to stop. These guys were singing about nachos.
Besides food there was also music. Some concerts were free and others, like the symphony, you needed a ticket. We saw a parade of random animals walk by Buckingham Fountain.
At the LL Bean booth, we could take selfies with the giant bootmobile. I also threw boot and managed to get it in the target at the first try. I won a LL Bean sticker.
There was so many other things to try. If I had a chance to go again, I would and try other things. Maybe I would plan it so I go hit it 2 days and try more food since after about 5 samples, I was full. It is a nice way to get out of the office for lunch or out of cooking for dinner. I may have to start planning Chicago trips around Taste of Chicago just so I can sample more food.
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