Taste of Chicago 2019

I went to the Taste of Chicago after..four years. I went there my first month in Chicago and it was an experience, but I hardly knew my food preferences the way I do now. Back then, I just ate to live, now in addition to that, I eat for flavor and texture and more than sustenance. We (bf and I) went on Saturday, day 3 of the four day festival. There were pop ups each day as well, that's not something I remember from my visit but imagine has been around for a minute. We pretty much loved everything we ate and so now have new restaurants to frequent soon (since we don't spend enough money on eating out already lol).  

In terms of buying tickets, they should have had stanchion I think. Although I also think it shouldn't be that hard to have self-service kiosks for ticket purchases or the option to have tickets on your phone that the vendors can scan it. Maybe by 2020.

Kimcheese Fries

Let's start with the chicken noodles from Ukai -- straight up delicious. We also tried jerk chicken from a place whose name I marked on our flier and then promptly lost in the post-trip exhaustion. It was almost 90 degrees so there was a lot of sweating, and there were a lot of people. Next up were amazing pierogis from Kasia's (a name that haunts me because of the Rabbit Girls story, rather real life experience). Then some tamales and it was time to take a break because it rained suddenly. I'm a classy lady and I promptly wore my poncho, which in retrospect looks like it could be a garbage bag. This picture of me eating kimcheese fries (yes, you read that right) wrapped in my fashionable poncho, sums up 2019 well so far.

I then asked my bf to buy a beer simply so I could sit in front of the train coach setup they had. I'm a sucker for anything trains. I own a magnet, which has a map of all the L trains. I would LOVE to have the actual paper version, but I am not the person who will steal it from the train (not saying I wouldn't like to be though, for this one thing alone -- reminds me of a friend who stole traffic cones from the DND). It was too sunny to take a picture that would show the menu items listed in the way expected train arrival times are listed on the screen at major platforms. Those seats were as dirty as the CTA ones so pretty darn authentic I would say. 

We had rainbow icecream, a Chicago institution (it's been around for 93 years apparently) and Eli's cheesecake (absolutely yum, counting calories was not allowed in this visit). We wrapped it with some Mexican ice, perfect for a sweltering day. Look at that cheesecake with strawberries. I still insist that it was marked incorrectly on the map and it took us a lot of tries and walkabouts to find it but it felt worth it. 

There were plenty of port-a-potties (am I hyphenating this right?), service was quick at most counters. But the water.. The water was outrageously priced -- 7 tickets or five bucks for a small bottle of water. To be fair, you could bring your own water and there were a few water fountains sprinkled around (see what I did there). But still, as always, the scam is in the necessities.

I'm glad we went, I've started avoiding anything 'touristy' in Chicago and this made me realize I might be missing out on some really good things. Here's to Chicago summers.

I circled the places we wanted to visit, ticked the ones we did,
put smiley faces for our opinions and promptly lost this at the end.