The great thing about summer in NY is that there’s room to be whimsical with the never-ending array of things to do. Working in midtown has its perks; sure the place is bogged down by tourists at any given point in time, but, the offset is that there’s always something interesting and/or free around.
Today I ended up passing Times Square as I’m apt to do on my way to the port authority when I came across the Taste of Time Square music & food festival thing. Now, I love food. I certainly look the part, too. I was more than excited to give it a go and it was the perfect warm/cool start of the evening to do so.
The jist is simple; buy tickets each worth a dollar and trade tickets in for food. You can buy traditionally 5-10 although certain booths offer buying one for one. All the vendors set a ticket price for their wares; on average a decent sampling will cost 3 tickets. Some are more, some less.
I ended up trying four delicious dishes; Eggplant parm from Carmine’s, oyster w/ beer-based sauce, conch chowder from Angus McIndoe, and “Hush Puppies” which is some deep fried smörgåsbord of marine delicious from Bubba Shrimp.
There was a total of 34 vendors this year from around Times Square spanning five blocks. Unfortunately, getting there late (after work) basically meant I couldn’t spend enough time as I would have liked. The ticket deal also meant I couldn’t try more than a handful out of them all; I had to really pick and choose wisely and didn’t even get to hit up the last block of restaurants. The atmosphere was pretty good; overcrowded but years of working at anime cons and dealing with rush hour kind of cure you of claustrophobia.
All in all: good times were had. I’ll probably make an effort to go again next year!
So check out the gallery of delicious and be jealous. <3
~Isa