Iron Fork – Move Aside Taste of Chesterfield

Event Attended: March 20, 2014

Rating: 5 Stars!!!

In principal the Taste of Saint Louis, or more appropriately the Taste of Chesterfield from now on, is a grand idea. Free entry and a sampling of Saint Louis’s finest restaurants in one space. In execution it’s kind of a mess. The event leaves the streets smelling of pungent grease for weeks, the food portions are too large and expensive, and it takes half an hour to get to the more popular stands. You leave feeling overly full and much, much poorer.

The Iron Fork, sponsored by the Riverfront Times, does everything almost completely right. First, there’s a $40.00 flat admission fee, no need to carry around a lot of extra cash. I believe there’s a VIP pass too which gets you early admission, and access to a sit down area, but for your average goer, For $40, you get regular access, three free drink tickets, and lots of yummy food.

When we arrived, right at 6:30 pm, the first thought I had was literally “holy hell that is a lot of people.” To their credit, they knew what they were doing and managed to get us in within 15 minutes. Very impressive.

We immediately wasted no time in tackling the first food stands, deciding that having food in our stomachs would be beneficial before drinking anything. Our first mistake was getting individuals portions for each of us, which were sizeable and plentiful. Unless you’re eating a tiny piece of sashimi, you can easily split the dishes and always go back for seconds.

The layout of the food stands was simple. Spaced about 5 to 7 feet apart, you lined up in front and, in most cases, were promptly handled a serving of food. Unfortunately there were a few stands that didn’t seem to expect the swarm of people and they had extremely labor intensive dishes (like Iron Barley), but typically the wait was anywhere from instantaneous to five minutes at the most.

Not every stand was a gem, but there were some fairly impressive standouts. Spare No Rib was handing out gigantic servings of their Korean bbq ribs. I found the sauce on these delicious, but the meat was a little tough. Still, not going to complain about samples of ribs.

Melt stood at the ready with their signature Elvis Presley Waffle, a bacon waffle with nutella, whip cream, and a banana slice. What was most impressive is that despite making the waffles fresh, they kept the line moving at a brisk pace. The combination of all these ingredients was of course, delicious. Kakao had their own stand not too far down, serving paper spoons adorned with dollops of chocolate topped with some creme fraiche (can't hear that without laughing since South Park).

Dressel’s had cute little pork tenderloin samples with a mango chutney, and polenta. Not to be outdone, Cucina Pazzo was handing out gigantic veal meatballs, like you might find in a tiny little Italian woman’s kitchen. They were flavorful, moist, and fresh with just a hint of cilantro and Italian herbs. As a bonus, they were also handing $10.00 off coupons.

On the seafood end you had Cleveland Heath handing out square inch pieces of Hawaiin Marlin sashimi, freshly sliced from one of the most gigantic fish I’d ever seen. Believe it or not, more than one person passed on these. We were happy to take thirds just to make sure they didn’t go home with full trays. Central Table decided to pull out all the stops by serving seared diver scallops large enough to be an appetizer on their own paired with a whipped and chilled artichoke soup.

Aside from the food and drink tickets, there were plenty of establishments hawking their libations. I tried a few local whiskeys as well as a tequila or two. I also was able to sample both sangria and a variety of red and white wines from local Missouri wineries. I mean they were Missouri wineries so everything was sickly sweet, but nice of them to offer.

The event itself was incredibly gratifying, not that there weren’t a few snags. First, the lack of trash cans. Instead of placing a large trash can between every few stands they had people wheeling carts around. It was cute, but far too often my hands were full and it was difficult to juggle drinks and food.

Also, this was not a great event for vegetarians. I can count probably 5 stands that a vegetarian could visit and three of them were pastry stands. Not that I was complaining, but I’d hate to see any herbivores waste their money.

In addition, the “Saint Louis Chef” competition wasn’t well organized. I was actually really interested in seeing a live cooking competition, but the stage was placed in the middle of the room, and the announcer was using a megaphone which was impossible to hear. Also, with the elevated nature of the stage it was difficult to see what was happening.

On par, the bartending competition was badly publicized. In fact, I stood in a line for about 10 minutes before I realized that the bartender in front was making drinks for the judges. As a side note, after the judges left, I asked the bartender (pictured in the pink dress) if I could try any of the drinks, and she told me in a haughty voice “I really need to focus right now. I’ll hand out samples after the competition.” I understand being nervous about a competition, just direct me to someone else. Luckily, one of the other people at the stand was nice enough to let me sample. (The guy in the green).

Still, these were minor difficulties. All in all, the event was amazing and I eagerly await next year’s. Hopefully, we can convince another couple to go with us. As an event, easily five stars.