Taste of Atlanta, hosted in Tech Square on Oct. 23 and 24, is an outdoor food and wine festival which showcases the various restaurants around Atlanta, both popular and up-and-coming.
Over 70 eateries from the greater Atlanta area provided sample single servings of their best culinary work.
The diversity on display of Atlanta’s food scene attracts food lovers from Atlanta, the Southeast and beyond.
Taste of Atlanta encompasses more than just food from vendors. In addition to good eats from local restaurants, foodies enjoyed celebrity chef demonstrations, music entertainment from regional artists and a variety of spirits.
The Farm to Festival Village, an area off to the side of the main festival, showed visitors Atlanta’ local sustainable movement, featuring restaurants committed to using locally grown and produced products in their daily operations.
Visitors could sample the wares of these earth-conscience vendors and taste for themselves how delicious and economically-beneficial these places are. Adjacent was the Go Green Village, which showed visitors a variety of ideas of how to live an earth-friendly life.
This may sound like a child-unfriendly place, but The Family Food Zone offered fun, food-focused arts and crafts, including decorating egg carton caterpillars, making macaroni jewelry, creating a chef hat, decorating sugar cookies and making a self-portrait out of candy.
Aside from these activities, cooking demos and lessons taught and entertained little ones.
In addition to these cooking-related events, there were numerous other happenings. Atlanta’s top bartenders competed for the title of Taste of Atlanta’s Best Bartender. Many of those who competed are members of the newly formed Atlanta chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild.
Everyone enjoyed the strangely warm late Oct. weekend; it was perfect for an outdoor festival. As various smells and smoke propagated through the air, flocks of people moved around the many booths of delicious delicacies.
Local area restaurants were on the same plane as the big names, giving the small fish just as much room to hook a customer as the big fish.
Visitors to the festival could find their favorites as well as discover some new places they had never heard of.
Taste of Atlanta was a great weekend. It had lots to do for everyone, including kids and bartenders. Nearly every aspect of food was represented, from farming to preparation to presentation and everything in between. Foodies came from all over the Atlanta area and the United States to sample some of the greatest food around the Southeast.
Tech Square was one of the best-smelling places this weekend with tasty treats to match. When the annual festival returns in the autumn of 2011, make sure to grab a ticket as this event is both delicious and fun.