Taste of Colorado

This used to be a great event where little up-​and-​coming restaurants could show their stuff and allow eaters everywhere a chance to find a new culinary gem. Nowadays, this festival has turned into carnival/​fair food and isn’t much of a tastebud tango, but rather a gut bomb.
They still have great entertainers and musicians, but I don’t think I’ll go back anytime soon.

I enjoy Taste of Colorado! They have free music, ice cold beer, food, rides for the kids, and plenty of shade if it’s a hot day. A great place for people watching too.

The Taste of Colorado was extremely fun — the ticket system is the only thing I am not a huge fan of. I don’t mind paying a little extra at a special event for food I can find outside of the event, but it just didn’t work for me this time around. I tried loaded nachos from a booth serving macaroni and cheese — in the end I paid $ 26 for a boat of a giant potato chip with cheese, bacon and sour cream. Now, every single bite of this was delicious but the cheese only covered half of the chips because there was so much in the boat. I also don’t think one nacho boat should ever cost $ 26. There was a lot to look at — all of the vendors were really unique. My son enjoyed story time — the little play put on by the library — it was a great idea to sit down for a few minutes!

The food is very expensive and not very good and a very low value. For example a tablespoon of Jambalaya cost us $ 4 (what they call a taste which is a total rip off). Three small bites of chicken with a ¼ cup rice cost $ 10. No one would ever dare charge these prices with tiny servings at a restaurant. We spent $ 20 and were starving. Do not buy the food. Just go for the free concerts and art.

A trip to the taste of Colorado is a fun thing to do on an otherwise boring weekend with nothing to do. The entrance from the 16^th street mall side greeted you with free samples from Jack Links beef jerky and free t-​shirts, flashlights, head phone and other trinkets from Ford. This years celebration seemed much bigger than other past years. It encompassed the whole of Civic Center park plus some other surrounding streets. There was plenty of free activities to enjoy for pretty much everybody including live bands that rocked the stage all day long. Carnival games and rides entertained the kids, while the adults got to enjoy many adult themed activities as well. If your going to go to this event, remember to go early, since it gets very crowded, buy meal tickets at the ticket booths if you want to eat there and if you follow these steps you’re sure to have a good time.

Seriously overpriced food and drink. Wayyy overcrowded and total sensory overload. I live here and will not come back. Waste of time. And money.

We just moved here a year ago, so try everything one, right? Well, this is a «once is enough» affair. Very expensive, low quality food,
merchandise and people you probably wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.

@ATasteofCO Celebrating it’s 32^nd year in 2015, Denver’s Taste of Colorado is good family fun.
500,000 people make this four-​day Labor Day Weekend festival jubilee the place to be in Denver. With 50 area food establishments, 275 marketplace artisans and vendors, six stages with all sorta of music and entertainment plus educational programs promoting the diverse cultural and western heritage of the region! No admission fee!
The prices were not bad. I remember it being more expensive. You definitely get your monies worth. Even the ‘taste’ portions are large. The ice cream scoops were huge!
Originally named Festival of Mountain and Plain, it was established in 1895 as a carnival. Closing in 1902, and, after many years, it was brought back to Denver in 1983.
Taste of Colorado has something for everyone. And the food is amazing. The vendors selling wares are good as well. It’s just great times all around.
Bring an empty stomach. You’ll be glad you did. Try something exotic. You’ll be really glad you did.

$ 10 for 15 tickets. 24 food booths and half were generic soda water and Coors booths. Almost no tastes, many items of food take 16 – 25 tickets each!
Cici Pizza and Perkins… Really?! Was not local food on any scale.
Hugely disappointing as a Colorado native.

I stopped buying tickets at this event years ago when I realized how much I was being taken for for buying anything. The ticket scam is just that, a scam so people don’t realize just how much they’re paying mostly for stuff you can get just about anywhere for about half what it costs at Taste of Colorado. This was once a great event to try some local food & drink, enjoy some music and check out all the people. Now, people watching is about the only thing worth the price. I go occasionally to check out a new version of an old band, or some one-​hit-​wonder but I don’t buy anything at this event. I’ve been to the Taste of Ft. Collins a couple times now and it’s better than this «Taste» just because they still allow you to pay cash for food and drinks rather than sticking you with the inevitable unused tickets you can’t return. Any event that uses tickets rather than letting you buy with that old-​school cash is just hiding the fact that you’re getting screwed. And yet, thousands of people continue to pour their money down the drain at this thing. There’s a fool born every minute as they say!

The festival is as bad as most people say. Colorado has some pretty amazing local restaurants, and the name of the festival is very deceiving. The food you get there is probably worse than airport or mall food. I got some chicken skewers I had to throw out because of how discussing they were and was frankly afraid to eat them. I’m still not sure that really was chicken.
It’s free so anyone can go. Anyone. And it’s not pretty. Rude, obnoxious people everywhere who will give you a death stare or yell at you if you’re trying to squeeze by a very crowded area as their waiting in line to get food.
Also because it’s free, it is waaay beyond its capacity. I’ve been to a lot of festivals — packed is not an issue for me. They all are and it’s fun to be around lots of people and make new friends for the day. When it comes to describing the «taste of Colorado» they to invent another word to describe how packed it is.
The music doesn’t play throughout the day and the stages are not strategically placed at all.
Will never go back. Try the Boulder Creek festival instead.

If you know what you’re in for, you should love Taste.
A. The music. For free I’ve seen Boy Z 2 Men, MC Hammer, Brett Michaels, The Wallflowers, and En Vogue. Did I mention it was free?
B. The people watching. You won’t find a more diverse crowd at a Denver Festival.
Yeah, its crowded. Yeah, the food varies in quality. But if you pick your menu correctly and you remember that a ticket is something like 70 cents instead of a dollar, you’ll have a good time.
My food highlights this year: Tocabe, Philadelphia Filly, Gigi’s, Rudolph’s.

This was a great take! Yes it was super crowded, and yes everything is more tickets than you want to spend, but I totally recommend it. A lot of the food/​drink booths were not Colorado based. I enjoyed the concerts, the extra carnival rides, vendors, and other little add ons. If you’re not going as a serious foodie, it’s a nice day to spend in the sun! Plus I tried alligator!

Yikes. I’m not sure how this is a «Taste of Colorado» unless they are referring to the crowd itself. Now THAT was unique. However, with the exception of about 6 restaurant booths, every place here was something you could find pretty much anywhere else in the country. Very generic and incredibly overpriced.
I went with my dear friend Jamie D. who had a bunch of free tickets so I can’t really complain. But, if I had come here out of the blue I don’t think I would have wasted my money on tickets. Especially not with unimaginative options like Cici’s pizza– and if I wanted Cici’s, I certainly wouldn’t buy it here for twice the price of their all you can eat buffet.
I must say, I don’t really understand the point of this festival– It’s definitely great for people watching but subpar for everything else.

It’s free to get in but the name of the event is very misleading. You don’t get to taste food from any restaurants in Denver; you get to buy overpriced mall and airport food. I’ve been to other festivals before and understand that festival food isn’t going to be the greatest. At the taste of Colorado, I was afraid to get food poisoning (so I didn’t finish what I bought).
Also, since it’s free, it is over its capacity. It’s not a nice walk with a few congested spots around the food area or certain attractions (which would be understandable). It’s a crawl throughout the entire thing.
The music doesn’t play throughout the day, plus some of the stages seem to be placed in very inconvenient locations. It just didn’t feel like a festival at all.
If I had to rename this event, it would be «the walk through colorado’a airport on a very busy day.»
Not an event I would recommend or ever go back to.
Change the organizers?

Checked this event out today with the fam at the civic center expecting to taste foods from various colorado restaurants… instead we tasted fair foods. I am sure there was some colorado restaurants, but there was also a lot of fair foods… They should change the name to Taste of Fair Foods. Admission is free, but the food were quite expensive. It felt like we were at the Colorado State Fair without the big rides.
The nice thing about the place was the ease of finding parking. We parked at the Denver Art Museum parking. It was a short walk from there. Also there was a lot of shade.
Most likely will skip this event next year.

For a low-​key day of noshing on many, many different foods with select best friends… this was great! I’m so glad we did it, and I would definitely do it again next year.
There are some things we did with our day that most people won’t, though. We divided our time between the fair and Denver Art museum, so we could snack at a more leisurely pace and have some air-​conditioned relief from the 100-​degree temperatures outside. That really helped save our day, because if we’d just stuck to the fair by itself, we would have gotten bored and gone home after only a few hours.
The live entertainment was terrible, but we knew it would be like that because we came on Friday and all the headlining acts would appear on the weekend. It was worth it, though, because I think I wouldn’t have been able to handle the Saturday and Sunday crowds.
But the main reason we came — the food — was SO GOOD! I loved that for a buck or two you could try the specialty dish from each booth. Nearly everything we tried was totally delicious (the only exception was a strange seaweed salad from one of the Asian bistro places) and definitely made me want to try the restaurants in person.
What was disappointing, though, is that hardly any of them were passing out promotional coupons. We only picked up one special offer, and it was a coupon for a $ 20 lunch for 2 at Rodizio. I used that coupon yesterday and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT! I wish more of the restaurants had chosen to do promos like that, because I’d be much more likely (and willing) to try them if I could get a discount on my first visit. The fact of the matter is, I don’t remember most of the restaurants’ names because they didn’t give me anything permanent to take away from my visit to their booth. That’s a pretty serious marketing blunder and a giant missed opportunity for these businesses.

I was expecting good food from Denver’s restaurants but instead found a lot of fried, fair food. Even the restaurants that had booths had fried food.
The event had no entrance fee which was nice but brought an interesting crowd.
I’m not sure I’ll be going back next year.

When you think of Colorado cuisine are the first things that come to mind include: CiCi’s Pizza, Hard Rock Café and Joe’s Crab Shack? Yeah, same goes for me. Colorado has some great cuisine, why are they not showcasing those restaurants? Colorado also has decent wines so why is Barefoot out of California the only wine available?
The pluses:
Free live music
Some Colorado beer
Some liquor and wine (for the non beer drinkers)
Most restaurants offered «tastes» which allow you to try more food
The negatives:
Lots of chain restaurants — Colorado has restaurants and cuisine unique to the area. National chain restaurants do not represent CO.
Beer and wine selection — although they offered some CO beer, the majority of the beer was not from CO. **I would love to see Infinite Monkey Theorem urban winery be invited next year.
Some good eats I found were Pink Tank’s waffles (they were like crack!) and Sushi By Night’s Cali and Philly rolls. We also tried Little India’s Saag Paneer. The naan was flimsy and greasy and the dish was very mild and lacked flavor.
Apparently Taste of Colorado is not true to its roots and instead sold out to sponsors with deep pockets.

Why such bad ratings and reviews? I had a fantástic time here at Taste of Colorado.
Maybe people have to try and make it out on the first night so it’s not so crowded. I read lots of complaints about long lines.
No lines on the first Friday of the event. The Vendors are geared up and ready for you and they appreciate your business because its so slow. You actually get to chit chat with them a bit too which is always nice.
Bayou Bob’s fried alligator, buffalo bratwurst from Salt Grass Steak House, White Cupcake with Strawberry Frosting from GiGi’s Cupcakes, lychee shaved ice from Street food, ribs from parallel 17, indian fry bread from Tocabi (featured on diners n drive in) and roasted corn with butter. Mmmm
I ate all that dispersed throughout the afternoon and evening. I visited the art museum which borders the festival and when I’d get bored or hungry with the museum I’d pop out for some food and festivities.
The live bands and performers were fabulous. I saw a belly dancing troup of women (all white age ranged from young to super old) that were interesting and entertaining, rocked out to the fiddle player and sassy country band at the country music stage and later in the evening went back to the Tums stage to catch a great Tango show. So dramatic, sexy and romantic Tango is.
I love the location of the Taste of Colorado with the dramatic white Capitol buildings in the backdrop and the gorgeous fragrant flower garden in the middle. I also love that some of the booths are scattered amongst crab apple groves.
Maybe it takes a non native to enjoy this event or maybe I just got lucky and the stars lined up and everything went well for me at the Taste of Colorado. Whatever it was that I experienced I hope you get to experience it too. 5 stars!