• World
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Central & South Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America & Caribbean
    • Middle East & North Africa
    • North America
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
    • US Election
    • US politics
    • Joe Biden
    • Brexit
    • European Union
    • India
    • Arab world
  • Economics
    • Finance
    • Eurozone
    • International Trade
  • Business
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Startups
    • Technology
  • Culture
    • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Film
    • Books
    • Travel
  • Environment
    • Climate change
    • Smart cities
    • Green Economy
  • Global Change
    • Education
    • Refugee Crisis
    • International Aid
    • Human Rights
  • International Security
    • ISIS
    • War on Terror
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Weapons
  • Science
    • Health
  • 360 °
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice
  • About
  • FO Store
Sections
  • World
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Sign Up
  • Login
  • Publish

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

Close

Taste (Test) of Chicago

By Nicholas Cizek • Jul 17, 2011

Nick Cizek takes a closer look at the sights and smells of one of the largest food festivals of the world.

Last weekend kicked off the Taste of Chicago, an annual downtown event which runs every summer from June 24-July 3. Chicago’s official website bills it as the “world’s largest free-admission food festival,” making the “Taste” seem falsely quaint.  Odd, then, that on my way to my first Taste ever, a chance meeting with a friend and veteran of the festival brought these words of advice: “Eat a Subway sandwich before you go.” In fact, everyone I talked to beforehand told me to skip it, for one reason or another, offering a taste of Chicago before I even got there. The Subway tip was rational and economical (poor student). Another told me it’s too crowded (the suburbanite). From another, it’s too dirty and smelly (the upper class). You can get whatever you’re going to eat there at a place around the block (the homebody). It’s dangerous (the racist). Skeptical, I searched online reviews. The first comment I found warned me against fat suburbanites who will think it novel to gobble a barbeque turkey drumstick the size of a human leg (the urban snob). Chicagoans from virtually every walk of life advised I get my taste of Chicago somewhere else.

The irony of such a large number of people telling me, based on prior experience, not to go is that, of course, they have all gone at one time or another themselves. And they still go every year, too, or else the new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, wouldn’t have had to cancel the July 3rd fireworks for reasons of crowd control, and event organizers wouldn’t have moved closing time a half hour earlier and catered musical acts to both the older and the very young crowds—skipping teenagers and young adults—in hopes of keeping a bit more order this time around. Despite all the naysayers, the reality of the Taste of Chicago is that it is more popular than ever. Millions come each year, no matter how many say they hate it.

It should come as little surprise, then, that I should feel compelled to go to these festivals, even though I have often professed that I hate them. I’ve never understood the concept of the food festival, especially large ones. What do you do after you’ve eaten, especially at the Taste of Chicago, where, being a young adult myself, the music has been deliberately selected to make me leave? My stomach does not expand in direct proportion to the amount of food I’m surrounded by, and so, whether there are five or fifty vendors in a row, all minus one or two are just for looking. The Taste has nearly 60 different food stalls this year. You could spend all ten days of this year’s festival eating your breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a new food stand and you would still miss half of them. Not that you would want to, unless you like having the same thing for every meal. You wouldn’t detect the homogeneity by scanning the list of restaurants (Bobak’s, La Justicia, Lou Malnati’s), but the menu items (pizza, sausage, chicken wings, pizza, sausage, and so on) all blur together into one long food court medley. I thought I finally found an exception when I spotted C’est Si Bon! in the distance, until I got close enough to see the spicy chicken wingettes and collard green egg rolls.

Phil Vettel of the Chicago Tribune has been covering the event for 28 years, and the headline of one of his articles from this season reads: “How to Write Something New About the Taste of Chicago.” He decided to introduce the event by way of a tour through the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief. In the fourth stage, Depression, he laments Taste’s being an “unstoppable machine, as predictable as an escalator ride and about as surprising.” You could argue that none of this matters, since, realistically, we’re all only having one meal here anyway. But how to choose? With Chicago being the proud host, branding its name across every entrance, something uniquely Chicago would seem appropriate.

Your decision, however, depends less on what food Chicago makes as much as on what you make of Chicago. For those who like to think of Chicago as a working-class city and hog butcher to the world, who romanticize the neighborhood heritage, with its mom-and-pop stores and street markets, Bobak’s Sausage Company will do fine. Make it a Maxwell Street Polish, named for the market that used to take place there, topped with onions, mustard and peppers. For those who celebrate the tradition of ordering in, at least five stands offer basically the same slice of Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Those that see Chicago as one of the food capitals of the world might appreciate the wine bar and accompanying jazz combo. Even the skeptics who claim that a true Chicagoan would most likely buy groceries can find peace in knowing that one of Chicago’s major supermarkets has built a large presence with several stalls at this year’s Taste.

Still, that nagging question remains: Why am I here? If I were looking for the authentic Chicago, I’ve come to the wrong place. And then I realize this is exactly the point. The Taste provides an escape, not so much to some vacation paradise as to an alternate, dream-version of the city, just as loud and uncomfortable but better.

American cities do not work the way Taste does. Cars come first on the street, especially a wide, multi-lane one like Columbus Drive, which acts as the main thoroughfare of the festival. But during taste, only pedestrians roam, the stoplights and walk signals unheeded, mere background lighting for the show. And, while the throngs of people hold court, the usually rushed ritual of selecting a meal is lingered over and savored, like the meal itself. A dominant chain is nowhere to be found. McDonald’s is relegated to a side street, and forced to be content with only one location.

The demography gets reshaped in a way that is just as unlikely. Being the biggest free-admission food festival in the world means that no restaurant can be shunted off from the masses. Chicago remains a notoriously segregated city, but at the Taste, Harold’s Chicken, a south-side mainstay, enjoys a central location, just across from the wine and jazz. Racial and cultural mismatches and misunderstandings occur everywhere at Taste. I watched as a black woman ordered a Polish sausage at Kasia’s, which advertised its “Old World Goodness” (since 1982). The Polish woman behind the counter stared incredulously as her customer asked for the sausage without anything on it—no onions, no kraut. She then looked at me, next in line, with a smile on her face, looking for some sort of empathy for this misguided order. I gave her back what she wanted, a shake of the head in feigned disbelief, all the while scrambling to rethink my order, mentally adding all the toppings after having planned on ordering a sausage with nothing on it.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The image used in this article is the property of Shutterstock. All rights reserved.

Share Story
Categories360° Analysis, Culture, North America TagsFocus Article
Join our network of more than 2,000 contributors to publish your perspective, share your story and shape the global conversation. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world.

READ MORE IN THIS 360° SERIES

Infographic: Beer-Drinking Democracy
By FactBlink • Dec 03, 2012
Mealtime in Masr
By Anthony Pemberton • Jul 23, 2012
Barbecues and Black-Eyed Peas
By Erinn Waldo • Jul 22, 2012
Home is Where the Rice is
By Viet Chi Pham • Jun 18, 2012
There is No Love Sincerer Than the Love of Food
By Ivo Oliveira and Emma Ley • Jun 18, 2012
“Sorrow, Joy and Laughter at the Oktoberfest”
By Viet Chi Pham • Sep 29, 2011

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious Mr. Abbas Should Have Awed the UN, Not Just Shocked It.
Next PostNext China Does Some Chest Thumping
Subscribe
Register for $9.99 per month and become a member today.
Publish
Join our community of more than 2,500 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse.
Donate
We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible.

Explore

  • About
  • Authors
  • FO Store
  • FAQs
  • Republish
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact

Regions

  • Africa
  • Asia Pacific
  • Central & South Asia
  • Europe
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • North America

Topics

  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Environment
  • Global Change
  • International Security
  • Science

Sections

  • 360°
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice

Daily Dispatch


© Fair Observer All rights reserved
We Need Your Consent
We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Learn more about how we use cookies or edit your cookie preferences. Privacy Policy. My Options I Accept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Edit Cookie Preferences

The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.

As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media.

 
Necessary
Always Enabled

These cookies essential for the website to function.

Analytics

These cookies track our website’s performance and also help us to continuously improve the experience we provide to you.

Performance
Uncategorized

This cookie consists of the word “yes” to enable us to remember your acceptance of the site cookie notification, and prevents it from displaying to you in future.

Preferences
Save & Accept