I really like food festivals, but am leery of them when they ticket price is reasonable, because generally this equals long lines. I went to a Phantom Gourmet food fest once, that was in this giant grey blob of a warehouse (someone else had bought a group of us tickets) and let me tell you there were thousands of people at this event and the lines to taste anything were about an hour long. I'll go buy a whole pizza at upper crust instead of waiting in a mile long long for a sample, thanks. This is one of the reasons The Taste of the South End works so well, ticket price is a little higher, so you don't have lines, and the food is above and beyond. But who doesn't love Bacon and the south end, so 4 of us gave it a try!
When we first arrive, before it started, the line was so massive to get in I kind of thought we were going to have to skip this and go over to Rocca or Gaslight for a meal! But come to find out they just had not let people in yet and this was the reason for the long line. We waited for a little bit before we go in, which wasn't bad. The crowd was mostly 20 something hipsters I would say, and people that love pig obviously! There were a lot of pig themed t-shirts here!
We finally got inside and headed straight for the beer. But then I threw my cup out, I was only concerned with bacon. The first thing we had was a cupcake topped with bacon from South End Buttery. It was very yummy!
Then we had scallops from Turner Fisheries which was also good. But what we tried third was really awesome. It was pork belly and it was from a restaurant I've never even heard of - Stoddard's! But now will have to try!
Next we had a fried oyster from Rialto. I don't like oysters...next....We had candied bacon from Rocca which was excellent! Next to Rocca was B Good and they were serving a bacon chocolate milkshake, which was literally to die for. I am going to try and replicate this at home! It was so perfectly chocolaty and had little pieces of salty bacon swirling about!
One of the other things I loved was a sort of dumpling kind of dough thing with candied maple bacon glaze on it filled with egg, bacon and cheese and it was INCREDIBLE. I had two! I loved loved loved loved it. It was from Atwood's.... I didn't even take a picture, it went in my mouth too fast!
The Franklin Cafe was serving a tiny little pretzel like thing with bacon and mustard. I liked that you could just pop it in your mouth, but I wasn't crazy about it. It seemed over cooked to me. Next we had cheesecake that had bacon and chicken and other stuff in it, and I had one bite and threw it away. Sorry. I did not like it one bit. I would have liked it if were the regular sweet kind with bacon bits I think. Bacon seems to work well with sweet!
We stopped at The Myers and Chang table were they had like a bacon sandwich which had a good flavor to it.
Next I wandered over to get the bacon wrapped date, but they were out! I love dates :( So we grabbed some bacon laced Chex mix instead which was pretty good. Then we headed over to Gaslight's table were they were serving begets.
Someone was serving what looked like a great brownie and bourbon sundae but I just couldn't put another thing like that in my mouth. My stomach was done! What a great event!
