To start with, I've been on a hiatus from 515food because I decided to completely stop eating since my last review just to see what would happen. I'm still alive and even weigh a bit more so I must be invincible and my reviews therefore infallible. That and the desire to defy the will of most of the online community convinced me that my blue-collar opinions of eating establishments are woefully needed to irritate some and guide others away from wasting money on garbage. The 2014 World Food And Music Festival seemed like the perfect opportunity to resume caloric intake.
The festival featured 50 different food vendors, 30 beers, international wines as well as plenty of music. This review will focus mainly on the food. Each vendor has samples as well as entrees. I thought the festival was well planned and executed. The lay-out was ideal for avoiding human traffic jams. It was clean, affordable and very diverse. The one thing I would have liked to have seen more of was shade. Most of the event area was completely open and the Sun was beating down hard.
I'd like to say that I wish I could have tried something from every vendor but I don't wish that. I was actually kind of surprised that a few of them were even allowed as serious vendors. I expected the food to cover the spectrum of the Universal Crappy Food Scale, from very bad to incredibly awesome (yes, that scale is a real thing). I was partially wrong but we'll come back to that. Almost everything I tried was, in fact, pretty good.
What did I try? Here is a short list of some of the foods I tried based on what I could record with a limited cell phone battery, limited memory and a paper and pen with the pen only having about 17 1/2 words worth of ink left. I scratched my notes into paper with the pen after that point. The following vendors are named simply by what they called themselves on their banner. These were not the only items available but I'll save the best for the last (that doesn't mean the first ones suck...it just means that last few are awesome).
The Ethiopian Association Of Iowa offered a dish called Tibs which consisted of beef or chicken with green peppers, onions and garlic served over rice. Not bad at all but it isn't something specific to only Ethiopia. We might have something like this next week in our own home.
The vendor from El Salvador offered Casamiento. It's more or less rice and black beans with some spices. It's not fancy and the rice was under-cooked.
Papilon Bosnian Food offered their Sarma. It was a beef and bread entree with a thin red sauce. It was definitely worth trying.
There were a few Mexican vendors and one that I chose was Taqueria 3 Hermanos. Their sample was their Chicken Quesadillas. I was a little reserved about this choice because I'm not a huge fan of simple quesadillas. I was surprised with this item and I actually considered going back for more and I didn't only because I had other places to move on to. But this was a very tasty quesadilla.
There was also Heart And Seoul....a Korean food vendor. They had their Bolgoli Beef Taco. I had that early and wondered if I would be able to give them a fair shake since it was so good but so early. The good news is that I didn't forget about them or their quality. They were outstanding and memorable even after such great food after them.
With all of that out of the way, I will now bring it down to the last three. These are the three I strongly suggest checking out.
#3....New Oriental Food Store. Food from Laos and Thailand. I only had their eggrolls but I love eggrolls and eat them often. These are some of the best eggrolls around....period. I wish I could have ate 5 of them.
#2.....We're getting into heavy hitters now. Afiyet Olsun. Mesopotamian food. They offered their Tabsi Tayok which is marinated chicken with lime and vinegar, cooked with tomatoes, green onions, onions, garlic, parsley and flavored with various spices. I ate a lot of things today and this is exactly the second best thing I ate all day! It was perfect and would have easily been the best thing I had if it weren't for.....
#1...Andulusia and their Andulusian Mushroom Soup. Just like it sounds. Andulusian....mushrooms....some onions and some other awesome secret stuff. I don't know what's in it or if such a place even exists. But I do know that their soup was the best thing I tried all day and I hope to find a recipe to try at home.
So these are some of my favorites from the festival. You may notice that there aren't any American dishes on my list. That didn't go without notice on my part either. In fact, I didn't even bother trying a single dish from an American vendor. I saw a few of them but they were almost embarrassing. The first one was selling doughnut holes. Seriously? The rest of the world is selling incredible food and the Americans have freaking doughnut holes? We also had cup cakes, "loaded fried potatoes", burger bites and plenty of other items I avoided. We even had an American BBQ joint and guess what their sampler was.......cupcakes!!!
I thought it was a great event. You should all get out there tomorrow. I give it 5 out of 5 pints for a rating but I think I'll stick with the Andulusina and Mesopotamian food if I have the choice. I think they clearly came out above the others on this particular weekend.
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