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| - I've previously skipped the Chile Pepper Festival in years past for one very simple reason. I'm the wimpiest of wimps when it comes to spicy food. Anything hotter jalapeños and I'm writhing in agony. When a festival advertises itself as all things chiles as this annual Roosevelt Row event does, my first instinct is to run for the hills and save my innards. But as it happened, a date that I'd brought downtown for dinner and drinks thought the festival would be a great idea and pleaded with me to go. Being the gentleman I am, I walked her over to the main entrance around 6:30pm and prayed the Zantac I'd taken earlier in the day would save my stomach.
The Roosevelt Row Chile Pepper Festival is now in its 6th year and is a collaboration of food, music, and neighborhood good works. The event raises money for the Roosevelt Community Growhouse and features restaurants from throughout the Roosevelt Row neighborhood. Roosevelt Row is typically blocked off between Central and 3rd Streets for the event and features live music acts along with the food and drinks. Each restaurant serves their own pepper (or pepper infused) dish. Admission is $5 per person with food and drink tickets $1 each. I got 5 tickets. The thought being that if my first dish was too spicy, then I'd use the other 4 tickets to douse the fire in my mouth until I was ready to pass out for the night.
To my great (and pleasant) surprise, the food at the event was not at all as I'd feared. For those spice addicts coming to the festival looking for fiery habanero, ghost pepper, or capsaicin infused dishes, you'll largely leave disappointed. As for me, I was relieved and pleased to find that most dishes certainly had a kick, but nothing super overpowering. My dishes consisted of everything from a green chile pork burrito to a chipotle infused papusa, to a red pepper infused blue corn vegan taco, to a cochinita pibil pork dish with roasted assorted peppers. I even had a sampling of a roasted and seasoned whole green chile pepper, which again was pleasant and flavorful without being overpowering on the spice. In the end I wished I'd actually gotten more tasting tickets as there were more than a dozen food vendors to choose from.
We got there during prime time and while the streets were packed, the lines moved at a pretty good clip. I never waited more than 10 minutes for any of my dishes and most lines were no longer than 5 minutes long. There weren't many places to sit down so tables and chairs setup would be nice, as would more plentiful portapotties. Going forward, perhaps it would be best to move this event to the east end of Hance Park. There you'd have more abundant space for vendors, for people to move around, and space to possibly incorporate a full seating area for event goers. The crowds were fairly manageable tonight, but as this event grows I hope Roosevelt Row CDC stays ahead of the curve and books a bigger space. All things considered, a surprisingly fun, festive, and palette pleasing night. Or at least for a spice wimp like me.
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