Grafico Topico’s gallivanting Gaul, Monsieur Flaneur, extols a summer excursion to the US Midwest’s leading metropolises: Chicago, Saint Louis and Kansas City, all within easy reach of each other by plane, train or motor bus. Well worth a visit, he enthuses, they have superb culture, parks and gardens, design, fashion and food. In short, there’s so much more to the central heart of America than tornadoes, Dorothy and Toto and Judy Garland …
TASTE│CHICAGO
America’s second city, Chicago, is très riche in museums, fabulous skyscrapers, music, fashion, comedy, and, Flaneur would venture, just about anything else your heart would desire in a world metropolis.
But eating is one of the singular adventures of travel and this fascinating place has an equally remarkable annual summer food festival in the park which has attracted Americans for some years: “Taste of Chicago”, June 24 to July 3, 2011, Grant Park, Michigan Avenue and Congress Drive. www.tasteofchicago.us
There is no entry charge to the 10-day fete and participating restaurants offer a tremenous choice of cuisine, conveniently in one place, from ethnic and exotic styles to Chicago specialities. For the non-American visitor, the festival is also a piquant habitat in which to observe the customs, dress and dialect, and perhaps to engage in stimulating discourse with, a great throng of Chicagoans.
This year, owing to the national recession, four of the city’s annual lakefront music festivals will be incorporated into Taste of Chicago (rather than running as stand-alone events), adding even more interest to the event. Details of what is described as a family-oriented entertainment program will be available from late March at: www.chicagoparkdistrict.com