A Taste of…?

My hometown celebrated a special event last weekend called “Taste of Park Ridge.” “Taste ofs” usually offer small portions of food in an outdoor fair-like atmosphere.

The best is Stavanger’s “Glad Mat” (literally means “Happy Food”) which is situated on Stavanger’s gorgeous harbor and offers lots of very adult fare like raw oysters, grilled half lobster, beautifully presented French desserts, champagne, mussels, wild boar sandwiches, and fresh fruits. Mind you, Knut and I spent a fortune there. Eating out is a huge gamble in Norway because it’s so expensive that it’s a giant disappointment if the food isn’t good. It’s heartbreaking to blow a month’s free money on a curry containing chewy mutton instead of tender lamb, so we’d just go to the same few places we knew were delicious. Glad Mat was just a few dollars for a small piece so if it was awful (I recall having the world’s worst nan bread there. How did they manage that?) you just tossed it in a bin.

Taste of Chicago is huge and used to be a wonderful event. When it began really nice restaurants like Bob Chinn’s offered small portions of garlic shrimp and you could stroll around munching shark or alligator. It was a tidy crowd who enjoyed sampling many things. Now it’s largely ghetto teenagers and the stalls are almost entirely pizza sellers. The one stand out in the last two years I went was a tiny crayfish boil in a Dixie cup. That was fantastic. It was three crayfish, a bit of potato, and a piece of corn cob all simmered in delicious spicy seasonings.

Taste of Park Ridge is definitely smaller scale and it’s almost totally locals. Many of the local restaurants had booths up selling Italian Ice, funnel cakes, pad thai,, tacos, etc. The stand out was a booth called Applause Catering. They had pulled pork and brisket sandwiches that were meltingly good, roasted corn on the cob, and homemade potato chips. I asked my mother who they were and she told me it was the man who provided the food for the local retirement hotel! Who would have guessed?!

They also had live music which in this case was an ABBA tribute band. As you can see from the photo, there wasn’t too much resemblance to ABBA. The blonde was very short and I couldn’t figure out where the second guy was. The women’s voices were also a bit on the heavy side, without that oh so Scandinavian brittleness. Mind you, the crowd had a great time. I just feel Knut and I can do “Tiger” just as well.