Neal Heitz, the general manager of Taste of Chicago, said there’s a trick to making the most out of the annual food festival, now in its 44th year and set to run Sept. 6-8.
“OK, it’s definitely my wife’s idea but she will come down to Taste with a large empty Tupperware container — she’ll go online and look at all the items and pick out like six restaurants she wants to go to,” Heitz explained. “She’ll walk through and put the items that she wants into her Tupperware, get something to drink and then spreads out a tablecloth somewhere grassy and really enjoys the food.”
This year, with 39 food vendors and 17 food trucks lining the intersection of Jackson Drive and Columbus Drive, Heitz suggests guests make a couple of run-throughs to hit the mix of returning favorites and some notable new spots.
“I think sometimes people think of the Taste of Chicago as this constant, walking and eating, walking and eating, but you don’t have to do it that way,” Hetiz laughed.
Pegged as the “grandmother of food festivals” by its organizers, admission into Taste of Chicago is always free and all vendors will accept cash or credit cards. They don’t mess around with food tickets, which often complicate the experience at other festivals around town, Heitz noted.
“We work really hard with our vendors to make sure that they are selling and serving in one fell swoop,” Heitz said. “Sometimes new vendors want to prepare per order, and the reality is that doesn’t work — you have to have those six items ready to go. You keep them hot, keep them at temperature, and you just keep the line moving right.”
There are 13 new vendors this year including Arepa George, Donut Dudes, Oooh Wee It is Restaurant, and food trucks Soul & Smoke, Monster Dogs, the Happy Lobster and more.
Heitz said another new vendor, Ponce Restaurant, will bring Puerto Rican representation back to the lineup after a couple of years.
“It’s all about making sure that we have as much representation as possible,” Heitz said. “You want to be able to offer people an opportunity to say, ‘Oh, wow, I’ve never tried that before’ — we want people to come down and have a really unique culinary experience.”
Mano Modern Cafe, a Filipino spot in West Town, is another first-time vendor at Taste of Chicago.
“Our menu is built towards bowls, sandwiches, sliders, (and) quick bites,” said chef and owner Melvin Reyes, who partners with Zandro Zafra of Ctrl Z Coffee to offer pastries and coffee as well. “Our price point is where people come in three to four times a week. … We’ve built a really great customer base against that.”
While this year will be the first Taste of Chicago for Mano, Reyes is familiar with festival formats and spoke to their friends at Seoul Taco, another vendor at the event, for guidance. Mano Cafe is focusing on offering several “quick bites” at the $5 price point. Taste of Chicago requires each vendor to offer at least some “Taste portions” for $5 or less.
Two items are lifted from Mano’s typical menu, the ube Twinkie and the lumpia. Mano’s offerings represent Reyes’ desire to make Filipino food accessible to a broader audience, while also adding a “modern twist.”
“At least 60% of our menu doesn’t exist on other menus,” Reyes said. The golden ube Twinkie looks like the childhood snack, but opens up to reveal the characteristic color of the purple yam.
Lumpia, on the other hand, is a Filipino finger food that many people associate with the cuisine. As is traditional, Mano’s are fried, filled with pork and served with a sweet chili sauce.
Two menu items were adapted or exclusive to Taste of Chicago. The Chori Slider is made of a chorizo and pork patty with cheese, lettuce and Pinoy bang bang sauce.
“It’s essentially taking our chorizo sandwich and making it small-format,” Reyes said.
The chicken adobo taco, on the other hand, is unique to Taste of Chicago. Typically, Mano serves the shredded chicken in a bowl, but tacos are better suited for walking and eating.
Reyes said he’s proud to represent Filipino food at Taste this year.
“The biggest driver for me … is to get Filipino food represented out there,” Reyes said. “(We see) restaurants popping up every month in Chicago that are Filipino-adjacent.”
Meanwhile, returning vendors like Tacotlán are buzzing from an already busy summer.
The Chicago taquería saw a boost in sales and popularity after well-known social media food reviewer Keith Lee, who’s known for his positive, non-snarky critiques of often struggling mom-and-pop shops, stopped by the restaurant and posted a video raving about the quesabirria tacos.
“After (Keith Lee) came, we were really, extremely busy — we basically saw our sales double from week to week and I want to say it was like that for about a whole month after,” said Tacotlán co-owner Jessica Perjes. “The fact that we’re getting brand new people, brand new customers, through the door is what is really exciting to us. A lot of people have said they came because of the TikTok (videos) — just people from everywhere, even out of town that are coming in and visiting, we could see them sometimes with their luggage walking in.”
Perjes said Taste of Chicago is an accessible way for people who’ve heard about Tacotlán via social media but need more than one reason to get out.
“Maybe it’s not in their budget to come to our restaurant or to drive all the way to our location, but anybody that wants to try our tacos, can at least try it in a budget-friendly way,” Perjes added.
Perjes said Tacotlán will be offering one quesabirria taco, one chicken quesabirria taco, or a birria grilled cheese for $5 each, though the Taste portion will be served without the quesabirria dipping consommé.
Customers can dish out $14 for a birria grilled cheese with the broth, as well as three quesabirria tacos with consommé for $18.
Perjes, who participated in Latin Restaurant Week in August, said the renewed excitement around Tacotlán was encouraging enough for her to gear up for a second year of Taste of Chicago.
“Running or going to a food festival is absolutely no joke, you’re constantly planning and thinking about all the supplies you need … basically guessing how much you’re taking and obviously, the goal is to sell out and not come back with any food,” Perjes said. “But what I’ve learned at these festivals is that you have to keep that line moving, because people want to try as many restaurants as they can.”
Heitz said his team sifted through more than 100 qualified applicants when curating this year’s event and had to decline quite a few.
“The reality is we don’t want an event with seven pizza vendors, right?” Heitz said. “One; I mean, it’s Taste of Chicago, so we still have to celebrate our Chicago foods, right? We have to celebrate the beef sandwich, celebrate the cheesecake, celebrate the rainbow cones, celebrate the Robinson’s ribs, all the vendors that people know they’re going to see when they come to Taste.”
Full lineup of restaurants below:
90 Miles Cuban Café
African Food Palace
Arepa George
Arun’s Thai Restaurant
Badou Senegalese Cuisine
Banato
Billy Goat Tavern
BJ’s Market & Bakery
Chicago Eats Market
Chicago’s Doghouse
Churro Factory (Xurro)
Connie’s Pizza
Cumin Club Indian Kitchen
Donut Dudes
Doom Street Eats
Eli’s Cheesecake
Esperanza Kitchen Delights
Franco’s Ristorante
Frannie’s Café
Gaby’s Funnel Cakes
Harold’s Chicken
JJ Thai Street Food
Josephine’s Cooking
Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria
Mano Modern Café
Moore Poppin Chicago Gourmet Popcorn
Oooh Wee It Is Restaurant
Ponce Restaurant
Porkchop
Robinson’s No. 1 Ribs
Sapori Trattoria
Seoul Taco
Star of Siam Thai Restaurant
Tacotlán
Tandoor Char House
The Original Rainbow Cone
The Sole Ingredient Catering
Yum Dum
Yvolina’s Tamales
Zeitlin’s Delicatessen
Taste of Chicago, 301 S. Columbus Drive, hours 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sept. 6-8; choosechicago.com/taste-of-chicago.
