Taste Of Falls Church

Gorgeous day for it. Great array of restaurant booths this year. Yelp booth spice game is fun! Good local entertainment! Yes, lots of local business booths and the usual public service booths are here. But this is still a great event to take in. It does get crowded in the early afternoon. But don't let that deter you!

I think this was my first food festival that I've been too and certainly wasn't what i expected. the food was mediocre nothing too exciting. Especially since the price of tasting tickets was a bit high. I think the only stand that was worth the ticket amount that they charged was Ireland's Four Provinces. Their entree's were hot delicious and they were prepared when serving multiple guest.Also it was nice that they have out container for their food. Other then that the price of tasting tickets was ridiculous espeically since most of the stands took more then one ticket for a decent amount of food.If your going to do a festival like this actually take the time to properly display your falls church. Cause if this was suppose to be a reflection then falls church fails as a food stop.

Who knew that culinary excellence could be found in the sleepy hamlet of Falls Church, VA? Just kidding it can 't. The annual Taste of Falls Church at the Fall Festival (on the early side the weekend after Labor Day) really doesn 't have much taste. Of the dozen or so local Falls Church restaurants represented, half were chains. Don 't believe me? Try Applebee 's, Moe 's Southwestern Grill, Trader Joe 's (yes, the grocery store), Robek 's. Just the sound of the lady working the Applebee 's booth touting their riblets was almost enough to make me gag. There were a handful of local places, but they 're not exactly culinary stars. To be fair, there are a couple decent, interesting restaurants in Falls Church, but they weren 't represented. For every food vendor, there were three home improvement arts crafts homemade jewelry clothing hucksters. And for some reason, it was crowded really crowded. Tack on long lines for overpriced kiddie rides (including the smelliest ponies on God 's green Earth) and you 've got the perfect suburban hell on earth. It 's lame festivals like this one that give the elitist DC city dwellers (like some here on Yelp) reason to thumb their nose at the 'burbs even the close in 'burbs like FC. Also, we dodged a bullet last year when Yelp advertised this Festival on the wrong weekend last year on its events page. Needless to say, now that we 've experienced the Taste(less) of Falls Church, we won 't be going again next year. PS The weekly farmer 's market is right next door, but they packed up and got outta Dodge before the festival really got going. Farmers are smart people. PPS My wife insists that I add a disclaimer that a couple of the truly local food vendors did a good job: Anthony 's, Dogwood Tavern and Open Kitchen. I think she should Yelp it herself the event still sucked.

I was a little skeptical about this going in, but it actually turned out to be a lot of fun! We went with friends and started by going through the farmer's market from about 11 to noon (picked up organic, local portabellos, apple cider, potatoes, pumpkins, and sourdough bread , and then wandered into the festival area. We got tastes from all the local places Haandi (butter chicken , Pizzeria Orso (BLT gnocchi with spinach and truffle cream so good! , Nourish Market (black bean sliders with fennel apple coleslaw , Anthony's (mini chicken gyros , Argia's (grilled italian sausages with peppers and zabaglione with figs and balsamic strawberries also super good , and Ireland's Four Provinces (beef mediallions and stuffed chicken with scalloped potatoes and asparagus spears . 4Ps also gave us free 50/50 bar (orange soda/vanilla ice cream floats, and when we walked by Pizzeria Orso's booth a second time, they gave us more of their amazing gnocchi for free. Mad Fox and Dogwood had good looking stuff too grilled cedar plank salmon at Mad Fox and oysters, jambalaya, and shrimp at Dogwood, but we just didn't have enough room to hit them all, even with four of us. The Clare and Don's and Lazy Sundae booth also had good looking items, (fish tacos, ice cream sundaes , but had a big line, so we skipped them. There were lots of other booths (crafts, local organizations that we walked by and didn't really go into, but the whole restaurant section was great. It was a bit crowded, but we just parked on a blanket in the shade and took turns going to get food. We just enjoyed the beautiful weather and people watching, and had a lovely time. Much better overall than I anticipated!