According to Mayor Daley’s office of special events, “Summer in Chicago is built around one event each year, Taste of Chicago.” But according to a writer posting on the food site Chowhound.com, said event is “hot, sweaty, septic, overpriced, and full of riff-raff and trash.”
Many of the food-savvy Chicagoans I’ve questioned about the Taste have said either to avoid it, or to just stroll by and take a distant, supercilious gander, as one might a cock-fight amid an alley of howling derelicts. It might be one of the most debated things in this debate-loving city (Sox! Cubs! Sox! Cubs!): Is the Taste of Chicago, which runs through July 8 this year at Grant Park and will attract over 3.5 million visitors, a complete nightmare, or is it Chicago’s signature summer event for good reason?
I lived in Chicago as a little kid in the 80’s and my parents never let me go to the Taste. I remember pushing my pudgy little face up against the inside of our minivan windows as we passed the event on Lakeshore Drive and seeing the grand Styrofoam entrance gates that led to a fantasy village of colored plastic tents. All I knew as a six-year-old kid was that I loved corn dogs more than anything in life, and this looked like exactly the type of trash-littered fairground where corn dogs liked to loiter.
I kicked and screamed but the parents refused: “It’s nothing but junk food that’s been stewing in the sun all day—you’ll probably just get sick.”
This only confirmed the probable corn dog presence and made me want to go to Taste of Chicago that much more. I lost the battle. Then I lost the war. When I was eight, we moved to Connecticut, which had zero corn dogs. I don’t think a single corn dog has ever migrated over Connecticut’s lush, coniferous borders. I picture a speckled doe approaching a lone corn dog in a Connecticut meadow, sniffing it, and screaming in horror.
A glance at the list of vendors and their offerings suggests that both my parents and I may have been right: The list doesn’t really resemble a large-scale tasting menu of Chicago’s wildly diverse restaurants and as much as it does a glut of junk food (mozzarella sticks, pizza, chicken wings). But that doesn’t mean it’s not distinctively Chicago or potentially delicious. I am going to the Taste of Chicago this week to find out whether it really offers something to discover about the city’s food (which would be great for Chicago), or whether it’s truly just an eight-year-old’s deep-fat-fried fantasy come true (which would be great for me and my therapist). Check out this year’s vendors here.
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