I’m a little behind in posts, so please forgive me as I catch up. This past weekend was the annual foodie event, the Taste of Charlotte, which is conveniently held uptown (convenient for me). Since I’m now working from home on Fridays, I have a chance to have lunch with friends and enjoy Uptown Charlotte during a weekday. A lot of lunch-y spots are closed during the weekend so I thoroughly enjoy having Fridays to explore.
Brad and I had a wedding out of town (more on that soon), so Friday for lunch was my one and only chance to try Taste of Charlotte. Somehow I missed out last year, which was my first true summer living in Charlotte. Before my current living arrangement, I was back and forth between my place in Raleigh, where I was attending grad school, and Brad’s condo after it was built. Before that Brad claimed to be homeless as he drifted from corporate apartments, hotels, and coworkers’ guest rooms.
Back to the food. I rounded up fun people who like to lunch and will pretty much try anything, just like me, and we headed out to Tryon Road, which had been blocked off for Taste of Charlotte.
First up, the Fage booth. 🙂 Most food costs money at Taste of Charlotte, but we scored big time on free (and generous) samples of Fage. We even scored a $1 off coupon!
Taste of Charlotte is all about the food but there are other activities as well, such as bull riding simulators.
The other free sample in which partook were steak samples…
cooked medium well and served on toothpicks.
I was dying to try Woodlands, a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Charlotte, since all of a sudden I have decided that I like Indian food. So I had the Somosa Chaat at their stand.
I’m kind of curious about their name since Woodlands doesn’t really sound like an Indian restaurant. In fact, there’s a well-known barbeque join in Blowing Rock, NC called Woodlands as well. If anyone knows why an Indian restaurant would be called Woodlands, I’d love to know.
Brittney thinks I look scary in the above photo, but this blog isn’t about being vain. 😉
Brittney with her Chana Masala. She shared some with me and I thought it was really good. It was nice to try something new, even though I probably wouldn’t order this again. I just made Chana Masala the week or two before. The Samosa wasn’t bad, but the little fried crispy things just weren’t my favorite.
You can tell if I’m really smiling if you can’t see my eyes. This obviously is fo’ real.
Thank glory that Amelie’s was there. I feel like a 90 year old lady saying that, but there’s no other way to give thanks for the local French Bakery. It’s just so yummy. They offered petit fours, coconut macaroons, and what I think was a PB truffle.
You can’t go wrong with their coconut macaroons. Britt and I both had one.
She also ordered the fried green tomatoes from The Flying Biscuit Cafe. I ate half of one. They were very thinly sliced and served with a dollop of goat cheese. Typically, these are served much thicker, but since we were trying to cut through them while standing, the thinness of the tomatoes really helped with that.
An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but this treat isn’t keeping you out of the dentist’s chair. This is a green apple with mini M&Ms and caramel sauce. Chloe ate this and it looked delicious. See, Brittney and I were not the only ones there! Although, I really don’t have proof of that do I? We were just way more into taking photos of each other eating than anything else and didn’t want to harass our lunch companions. It’s always awkward asking people if you can take pictures of their food, I feel even more awkward asking to take pictures of them as well.
This event was really fun and actually had better restaurants represented than what I previous thought. Sure, there were your share of chain restaurants. I have nothing against chains, I just would rather see more local Charlotte food at an event like this.
I didn’t use all my tokens, which they make you purchase so vendors don’t have to take credit cards, so I used them to buy cinnamon sugar roasted almonds for the weekend trip.
Later that day I met up with Kath and Emily, which was just so cool. I’ve been reading Emily’s blog for a while and have been reading Kath’s blog since I first became obsessed with healthy food/lifestyle blogs. I’ve never done a blogger meet-up before so this was something totally new for me.
Unfortunately, I had a horrible time trying to find the greenway where we had agreed to meet and run. It took me 45 minutes to drive to the general area, while it usually only takes 20 minutes, because of crazy Charlotte traffic. Then I could not find the greenway entrance anywhere. Silly me forgot to ask them for their phone number because they hadn’t met me yet and I didn’t want them to think I was a stalker. So I called Brittney, who just happened to be at a Daughtry concert with Jenn, because she had ran at this same location before. At this point I had turned into a maniac because I was 25 minutes late and had just nearly rear ended another car while trying to figure out where I was on my iPhone.
Without her, I would have never found this place, and probably would be so ashamed I would never attend another blogger meet up again. I felt so bad about being so late, but Kath and Emily were so super nice about it.
Thank goodness we ran on a shady greenway because the heat was ridiculous at this time of the day. I really pushed myself running with them, but was secretly ecstatic when Emily suggested we walk the last 0.3 of a mile while Kath really took off. She was really hard core about finishing strong and it made me really want to work on my stamina.
They were awesome and I can’t wait to hang out with them again! Too bad they’re both leaving Charlotte soon. 🙁
