Summer’s 10 Top Foodie Festivals
Summertime is peak season for food festivals. Road Trips Foodies are certain to mark these on their travel calendars this season:
Taste of Chicago (June 25 to July 4, 2010) (Illinois): There’s food for everybody’s taste at the 30th annual event, where you’ll find more than 200 menu items at over 50 restaurants serving from booths along Grant Park, cooled by the breezes from Lake Michigan.
Gilroy Garlic Festival (July 23-25, 2010) (California): They go through 10 tons of beef, four tons of pasta, four tons of calamari, two tons of scampi — and TWO TONS of fresh garlic each year at this foodie fest.
National Cherry Festival (July 3-10, 2010) (Michigan): One of the midwest’s best known foodie fests takes place beginning Fourth of July Weekend. This is the 84th year for the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City, Michigan.
Cheesemakers Festival (July 25, 2010) (Vermont): There’ll be more than 100 types of cheese to sample from 40 different cheesemakers at this one-day extravaganza in Shelburne, Vermont.
Maine Lobster Festival (August 4-8, 2010) (Maine): This is the real thing: they serve more than 20,000 pounds of lobster each year.
Capital City Ribfest (August 12-15, 2010) (Nebraska): Nebraska doesn’t have a distinct style, which means barbecue fans can taste Southern, Texan, Australian, Jamaican, Memphis and Southwestern BBQ, all in one place.
Winterville Watermelon Festival (August 26-28, 2010) (North Carolina): What’s summer without watermelon?
Shippensburg Corn Festival (August 28, 2010) (Pennsylvania): Main streets downtown are closed for this one-day festival with food booths featuring corn in every available form.
Hatch Chile Festival (September 5-6, 2010; New Mexico): The tiny town of Hatch balloons from 2,000 to 30,000 people every year as Road Trips Foodies savor hot chiles in the hot dessert.
Persimmon Festival (September 18-25, 2010) (Indiana): Road Trips Foodies can cool down at this venerable fest in Mitchell, Indiana, now in its 64th year. We’re not talking the the Japanese hybrid import variety of the persimmon, but the fruit of the native American tree that grows in the wild in southern Indiana.
