The Taste

The locals call it "The Taste", it's full title being the Taste Of Chicago, celebrating it's 25th anniversary this year. The concept is that you get to taste a little bit of everyone's wares so that you can find some great new restaurants to go to in future. I think somewhere along the way, it may have lost this concept.

I don't know what it used to be like, but what happens now is that you buy sets of 11 tickets for $7. Each ticket is supposed to be worth 50c, which means that $1.50 goes unaccounted for. Apparently the $1.50 is a facilities fee! So over 20% of all money goes to the city. Each vendor has 4 items on their menu and one of those is their "taste" item. The taste item is 3 tickets ($1.50) and the others are anything from 6-9 tickets. To be honest the whole thing felt like a bit of a rip off, but maybe that was just me, as plenty of people seemed to enjoy it.

We went along to the park where the fireworks and orchestra were going to be mid afternoon, to check it out. We met some really nice folks there who were celebrating their 5th anniversary and annual to the event, Matt having proposed to Jessica there 6 years ago, they now come to the same spot every year. It was really cool, cos they saved us a spot whilst we explored some more of the local area. The picture of the flags was taken on the way along Michigan Avenue.

We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and came back to a very crowded field, where our new friends had faithfully saved us a spot, and we repaid them with fresh cheesecake. We were pretty close to the front, but no-one really seemed interested in the orchestra, and were very busy partying.

After some warm ups the orchestra played some old favourites and not being a huge fan, some stuff I had not heard of. The fun and entertainment continued until after dark, and everyone started to get restless for the main event. As we understood it, there would be a lot of fireworks released in time to music played by the orchestra. This time they of course only played well known "tunes" like the 1812 Overture, America and The National Anthem.

To say there were a lot of fireworks, is an incredible understatement. To say there were a lot of people is an incredible understatement. I captured some good shots (well I liked them) of the fireworks and one of the crowd too.

All in all an excellent time was had by all, we made some new friends, and if we ever need a place to watch the Chicago fireworks from, then we know just the people! There are a lot more pics of the whole weekend of Jan & Maddy's visit, check them out here.