Festival Review: Middleton's Big Event of Middleton, Wisconsin

This past Saturday, June 13th, 2009, Middleton offered its 2nd annual Middleton's Big Event. The Event itself was a festival composed of a craft fair, children's activities, garage and business sales, tastes from local restaurants, various musical bands playing at local restaurants and fireworks.

Some of the restaurants featured in the Big Event Big Feed portion of the fest were Barrique's Wine Shop/Coffee Trader, Blue Spoon Café, Clasen's European Bakery, Club Tavern, Culver's, Falbo Bros. Pizza, Hubbard Avenue Diner, Villa Dolce, and Village Green. These were just some of the restaurants that were advertised as offering sample-size portions of their fare.

The Big Music portion of the fest included musical groups playing around or inside certain bars/restaurants. One could purchase a $5 ticket and go around to listen to these groups. Some of the musical groups included Adam Isaac & the People, John Eddie, Dale Watson, Westside Andy, Johnny's Jazz Trio, Faces for Radio, and many more.

I made it to the festival mid-afternoon on Saturday. There was not much of a problem finding parking, since the festival is spread out over the entire town instead of being confined to one place. After walking into the downtown area, the first thing I saw was part of the Big Sale portion of the fest. There were clothing, purse, and jewelry vendors, plus a grape seed oil vendor and a Verve energy drink vendor (who were affiliates/distributors for the parent company, much in the way that Mary Kay or Mon Avie sellers are affiliates/distributors). I had to admit; the Verve energy drink was not bad, and one could purchase a can of it for $3 on the spot. After the seller started telling me about the "secret sauce", which consisted of some concentrated mangosteen juice, I inquired about how much the 1 liter bottles of the juice actually cost. I was told that the price ran about $26. I just could not see paying $26 for a 1 liter bottle of mangosteen juice (aren't the Naked or Odwalla brands pretty much the same thing- minus the mangosteen?).

I proceeded to Villa Dolce, which is one of my favorite gelato places in Wisconsin. The place was selling pizza by the slice. I'm not much of a pizza person anymore, so I headed towards the Village Green, which had samples of either their homemade chili or seafood gumbo. I purchased some seafood gumbo. It wasn't bad, and was certainly gummy enough, thanks to the big chunks of okra. There were also bits of imitation crab and shrimp, plus some kind of Andouille sausage, I think.

I hit a few other restaurants in the area too, restaurants which had been advertised as selling food samples. However, aside from the Hubbard Street Diner, which was selling ice cream by the scoop, I never did encounter those 40 restaurants providing samples of their food.

Discouraged, I decided to instead take a little horse-drawn wagon ride around town. Admittedly, this was kind of fun; I'd been on a horse-drawn wagon only once before, and that was years ago. The ride was free, being sponsored by local businesses.

I never did catch the fireworks that were supposed to go off that evening. Maybe next time.

For more information about Middleton's Big Event, click here.