EDMONDS — Stefanie Hieber got a taste of Edmonds at a young age.
She grew up in the area, and throughout her life knew Taste Edmonds primarily for its carnival atmosphere and the chance to gorge herself on elephant ears and corn dogs. As a kid, that’s all anyone could have wanted out of a food festival, Hieber said.
Last weekend, Hieber made a triumphant return to the fest and was pleased to find both she and the festival’s palates have matured.
The Chef’s Tent hosted three big names with roots in Edmonds: Ethan Stowell, the internationally acclaimed Seattle chef who’s soon to expand his Victory Tavern concept into the heart of Edmonds’ downtown; José Garzón, who got his start borrowing an Edmonds restaurant’s kitchen and now operates several successful pop-up concepts around Seattle; and true hometown boy Shubert Ho, whose FeedMe Hospitality group is likely behind your favorite downtown date spot, whether it’s Bar Dojo or Fire and the Feast.
Hieber spent much of the three-day festival manning the register or taking down orders. The concept she founded with Garzón, Garzón Latinx Street Food, saw a steady line of attendees hoping to get a taste of their Chino-Latino fusion menu.
But, from her position under the tent, Hieber could tell that, compared to the festival she’d grown up with, something entirely different was happening at Edmonds’ Frances Anderson Play Field.
“As a kid, it was a place you came to kill an afternoon with the family, ride the little rides and eat some fair food,” Hieber said. “But it seems now like the focus is more heavily on the food itself, on bringing an actual taste of the area to folks in these small bites.”
Lentils with pork, left, and vegetable soba saltado from Garzón Latinx Street Food sit on a table during Taste Edmonds on Saturday, August 12, 2023, at Frances Anderson Play Field in Edmonds, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Under the direction of Edmonds Chamber of Commerce CEO Ryan Crowther, who also heads up the Everett Music Initiative and the Fisherman’s Village Music Festival, this year’s festival placed a heavy emphasis on tasting the wide variety of cuisines and concepts growing like weeds around its namesake hometown. For the foodies and the fair-food-inclined alike, there was no shortage of things to taste.
I made my way to the fest Saturday afternoon, hoping to start off by beating the sticky summer heat with a cool beverage. The beer garden, shaded under a massive tent, of course caught my eye, but serious reporting like this calls for some caffeination.
Luckily, Sweet Wheels’ neon-pink van caught my eye, too. The Seattle-based truck specializes in gourmet ice cream sandwiches and claims to have invented the cold brew float, and while I can neither confirm nor deny that assertion, I can tell you they sure do the treat justice.
The richly bitter black coffee perfectly countered the generous scoop of vanilla soft serve at the bottom of my cup, so much so that I resisted the urge to blend the two together and instead alternated between slurps of each. It was the perfect way to kick off the afternoon: refreshing, yet decadent.
Remi Thornton, 3, enjoys a birthday cake Marshmallow Crispy bar from Browned & Toasted in the shade during Taste Edmonds on Saturday, August 12, 2023, at Frances Anderson Play Field in Edmonds, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
We moved on down the line of local purveyors along Eighth Avenue to find well-loved standbys and new-to-me trucks alike. Ryan’s REZ-ipes, Tulalip’s beloved comfort-food joint, handed trays of tater tots piled sky high with pulled pork and sweet-sticky sauce to festival-goers like Nadia and Yasmeen Kabbani.
The sisters found a shady spot among the picnic tables in the park to share the generous serving, splitting slabs of smoked pork between them with plastic forks. Yasmeen, heavily pregnant and four weeks from her due date, said the tots were just what she needed.
“We’ve lived in the area a long time but haven’t tried most if any of the places here,” Yasmeen said. “But these tots alone were worth coming up from Bellevue for.”
The beauty of a food fest is that even when your stomach or wallet won’t allow you to sample everything on offer, the smells are free. Those waiting in line for colorful layered drinks from Lynnwood’s TeaCo or potato-crusted, Hot Cheeto-dusted dogs from Seoul Hotdog were treated to the delicious scent of glazed brisket wafting down from Gip’s Down-Home BBQ as owner Ron Gipson carved the juicy roast in the open air.
Ron Gipson of Gip’s Down-Home BBQ slices up some brisket during Taste Edmonds on Saturday, August 12, 2023, at Frances Anderson Play Field in Edmonds, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Clad in a T-shirt reading “Great Ribs, Nice Butts,” Gipson sliced through the hot brisket like a knife through butter and handed me a piece. He and his family have been turning out real-deal, scratch-made Southern barbecue for 15 years, but they’re borrowing from a tradition even older than that.
“Barbecue is probably older than the Bible, when you get down to it,” Gipson said. “It comes in earnest from slaves, who were usually given the less choice pieces of meat and had to do what they could to make it delicious.”
By this point in the afternoon, it was high time to quit hemming and hawing over what I wanted to eat and get down to business. Luckily, when Herald photographer Ryan Berry and I made our way over to the Chef’s Tent, Garzón seemingly read our minds and handed us two small bowls of the featured menu items for his stint at the festival: a veggie soba saltado bowl and a plate of stewed red lentils and tender pork belly over rice.
Angelina Kha, left, and Davina Nguyen show off their choices from TeaCo Tea House and Seoul Hotdog during Taste Edmonds on Saturday, August 12, 2023, at Frances Anderson Play Field in Edmonds, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Both plates struck the ideal balance between deeply satisfying, soul-nourishing comfort food and the kind of small plate you can scarf down quickly enough to get back to watching your buddy at the axe-throwing booth nearby. That makes sense because, as Garzón told me, his menu borrows heavily and lovingly from the Latin American tradition of chifa — a beautiful marriage between Asian cooking techniques and South American flavors and ingredients. It’s the kind of food you eat while you’re pregaming for your night of bar hopping, then come back for seconds when the night is over and the drunken munchies have settled in.
“That’s the kind of thing you don’t see very often in this area, and I’m excited to be here and to be introducing it to so many new folks,” Garzón said. “I want them to remember the first time they had something this good.”
Riley Haun: 425-339-3192; riley.haun@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @RHaunID.
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