Today we bring to you an edition of SSC that is quite close to my heart. Every year since I moved to Boston my best friend from high school/fellow Supper Clubber, Emily and I attend the Phantom Gourmet Food Festival. It was literally one of the first outings I had in downtown Boston. It's an amazing festival of gluttony and deliciousness that we look forward to every year. Once I realized the date of the event was quickly approaching, I thought it would be a kickass idea to blog about one of my favorite traditions.Phantom Gourmet is, for those of you that don't know,
is a local
TV show that tours the best (and most heart attack inducing,) restaurants all around Boston and New England. It's a great way to find new restaurants in your area and the perfect thing to watch on a Saturday morning when you're hungover and all you have in your kitchen is frozen chicken and saltine crackers. (Okay, admittedly that's usually when it makes me what to cry but it's still fun to watch.) The Phantom gives window stickers to the businesses they visit, so if a restaurant has that familiar purple logo on their door, you know it hast to be good!
Phantom Gourmet also puts out a yearly restaurants guide and holds several kickass events each year, the culmination of which is the Phantom Gourmet Food Festival. The festival is held at end of every September just outside of Fenway Park. They close a few streets down, set up scores of tents from almost every restaurants in existence (I believe there were 80+ booths this year) and start the party!Over the years Emily and I have attempted to devise a plan, a plan to not get too full to try everything, actually be able move later on and not feel like disgusting human beings after we leave. We then forget this plan immetely upon arriving and eat whatever the hell we want.
During the festival all the bars on Lansdown Street are open
and are totally hoppin. We never end up going to them because you get so full at this thing the notion of drinking beer is pretty much impossible, but it looks like a great time. I made my choice, and my choice was gluttony, not drunkenness. (Don't worry, I remedied that the next day.)
You can find any food imaginable here. From classy shit like yellow beet salad, to some not so classy shit like chicken wing dip and ice cream, the Phantom Gourmet Food Fest has something for any palette. There was some pretty crazy food here but we had a definite favorite. Sunset Grill & Tap, one of our favorite restaurants and home of the largest draft beer selection on the East Coast, sampled pumpkin beer flavored ice cream. You heard it right. Pumpkin flavored, beer flavored, ice cream. It was pumpkiny, it was beery, it was creamy, it was confusing, but most of all, it was delicous.
We also had the pleasure of meeting the founder of Spike's Junkyard Dogs, a gourmet hotdog joint. Founder Spike is actually a giant English bulldog. I have a sneaking suspican that he just might be a puppet leader of their organization. Cats are really the only animals with enough business saavy to run a successful restaurants establishment.
We also got a chance to check out Flatbread's on site pizza oven, ate scores of kickass baked goods, sampled some fantastic chili, and discovered a Zipcar covered in purple sporks. (Okay I really don't understand the last one, but I digress...)
Also for some reason there was a couple of giant chickens there and a girl looking semi-humiliated dressed as a taco. Some things you just don't question.
As usual the Phantom Gourmet Food Fest did not disappoint. We tried some new dishes, sampled some old favorites and got to take home a plethora of samples for the trek home. I'm always a fan of supporting local businesses but thank God this thing only happens once a year.
If not I think I would have lost a foot to diabetes by now.
If you'd like to know more about the Phantom Gourmet and some of the
festival restaurants you can find them at www.phantomgourmet.com!
Cheers!
Christa
About Christa
Christa is a comedian, artist and graphic designer living in Boston. Because most of her family is fresh off the boat, she knows a thing or two about traditional European cooking and baking, provided that the recipes are in English (Thanks a lot, crappy American school system!). She also has a vast knowledge of fancy-smancy beers made by smelly hippies. Although she has no food credits to speak of, generally speaking everything she makes is considered to be "damn good." Check out her other blog Shameless Pomp and Circumstance if you feel like it!
