Exhausted and starving after a long tattoo session (thank you to Max at Dead Drift Tattoo), I was more than ready to consume my weight in food. As I walked into the Colorado Block Party put on by Slow Food, I was dismayed to see long, crowded lines of people in such a small space. The drink lines seemed the shortest, but I needed food in my system. I hopped in the line closest to me and a volunteer was walking around passing out chips covered in goat cheese (?), so I snagged some and continued to wait in line for some mystery food. After a few minutes, the gentleman in line behind me awkwardly apologized for getting cheese in my hair and tried to wipe it out for me. At this point, I was tired and had accepted my fate of being forever squished in seemingly endless lines for mediocre food.
When I finally made it to the front, I was offered a tiny spoon of a delicious (but short lived) taste of a Colorado peach topped with honey chevre. At this point I decided to just move to the booth with no line; it was another small spoon of mole ganache with goat milk and toasted blue corn. Cool. My appetite was that of a ravenous beast still and I wandered over to a booth with an abundance of the same gross bite-sized sample (I can’t describe it, because I would rather not bring the memory to surface, seeing as I only ate two of them because I was desperate.) Eventually, I ran into my teachers and fellow peer. We delighted in each other’s company and quickly decided to split up and wait in line for two different things so we could get the best of both worlds. As one couple waited in line for the fried chicken, they had almost reached the front when it was announced that the vendor had ran out of fried chicken and would now serve beef tartare. Unsure of what beef tartare was, I pushed my disappointment aside temporarily… until I realized it was raw beef. Well, that was the final straw so we all resorted to getting multiple cocktails since they were easier to come by than food.
Overall, I found the event to not be worth the $69 I paid for it and a confusing misrepresentation of Colorado producers. On the brightside, Slow Food realized it was a disaster and it was their first time doing an event like this, so I can definitely being understanding. In my opinion, a helpful pamphlet would have been a great guide to knowing what vendors were serving what and giving a short description about each vendor as well would have done wonders.