Incredible Food Show

I really couldn’t decide if I wanted to give this a 2 star review or a 3 star review. But since my ticket was complimentary, I went ahead and bumped it to a 3. I’m glad I didn’t pay money to attend this event, especially $ 20. First things first. If you’re not big on crowds, don’t come. The sheer volume of people trying to weave their way through all the booths was beyond frustrating. People with strollers (really??) and people who insist on standing in front of the booth while sampling, instead of doing the polite thing and stepping aside once you get your little morsel. Now the crowd did seem to die down a bit once the featured presentation started so keep that in mind. But I certainly did not try to make my way through the booths in an orderly fashion. I ended up just weaving around, stopping at the booths that didn’t have lines. I don’t think I hit every booth, because of that.
I didn’t arrive right at 9am when it started, to do the breakfast thing, but I did want to arrive pretty early to see about getting a book for Ree Drummond to sign. There were 2 lines for people to buy books and 1 line was way longer than the other. So naturally, I got in the shorter line. Well, my line was definitely the slower of the 2. By the time I made my way close to the registers, people who were in the back of the longer line were closer to the registers than I was. And I don’t know what was taking so long with the check out process but holy cow, they were slow. There seemed to be plenty of people working behind the counter, given there was only 2 lines going but I think it was just 1 person doing everything from ringing up the purchase to bagging the purchase to explaining the signing voucher thing. Apparently, they were only giving out a limited # of vouchers for people to get their books signed. I never heard how many but I figured if I got there 10 – 15 minutes after they opened, I’d get one. Yeah, right. I stood in line for nearly an hour and missed getting a voucher by about 5 people. As soon as I saw I wasn’t going to get it signed, i stepped out of line and put my book back. No way would I pay full price for a book if it wasn’t going to be signed. And a ton of other people did the same thing. Joseph-​Beth lost a lot of potential money with that. Not sure what other system could be put in place to organize the signing but that’s how my visit started so it was pretty frustrating.
The little presentations in the back were nice. I didn’t see all of them but I saw a couple. I liked that samples were passed around as well as recipe cards. As much as I liked the hickory nut presentation, it was disappointing to discover this nut, taste it, *really* like it, but find out how hard it is to find them. But the learning aspect was nice. I guess I need to make a point to seek out this lovely little nut.
This was my first time to the Food Show and unless there is a celebrity chef that I’m dying to meet, I probably won’t be back. But if I do come back for a celebrity chef, I’ll make the committment to get there super early, pay the admission, and be prepared to stand in a long line. Not sure who would be worth all that though…

The Incredible Food Show was incredibly crowded! I arrived around noon with a friend. We didn’t eat lunch because we were expecting to eat so many samples that we wanted to save room for them. However the lines for the samples were so long that we didn’t stop at very many. It would encourage shopping at the booths if there was more room in the aisles. I bought items from booths at the perimeter, but nothing from the middle booths.
I bought two cigars from Kentucky Gentleman cigars as gifts-​a moonshine cigar and a Bourbon cigar. I enjoyed hearing about these cigars soaked in spirits and hand rolled in KY. I know that the men that I bought them for will think that they are neat. I also purchased some delicious honey from a beekeeper in Harrodsburg, Panther Totem Blessings.
My favorite sample was the Blue Bell ice cream. I had the pumpkin flavor and it was delicious! They gave us coupons for $ 1 off with our samples. I also enjoyed the Sutton’s samples of bread pudding and pasta. Sutton’s is near my house, but I have never tried it before. They gave us a coupon for a free appetizer or $ 5 off $ 25. I am definitely interested to check it out now! We didn’t get enough samples to fill us up so we bought macaroni and pulled pork bowls from Noodles & Co for $ 5 each. It hit the spot. Them we played the plinko game they set up and I won a free bowl and my friend won a buy one get one free coupon!
I also won a ticket to this event. It was interesting to learn about all of the products produced locally. It was a fun afternoon, but like Emily B, I agree that it isn’t an event that I would have paid $ 20 to attend. I think that $ 10 would be a fairer entrance fee.

I didn’t attend the featured presentation, and that may well make this food show a better experience, but I did spend a lot of time in the marketplace and watch parts of two of the other demonstrations. I (thankfully!) received a complimentary ticket, but tickets are usually $ 20 and I would have been really upset if I’d spent that much money to attend the show. The demonstrations I watched were alright, but not particularly engaging. The marketplace was large and there were a few really interesting vendors, but many of the items are fairly expensive and several vendors do not offer samples, which seemed strange to me at a food show. The wine area was insanely crowded, making it really difficult to actually learn much about different wineries or their wines. I love the concept of this food show with the emphasis on Kentucky Proud foods and providing a venue for local producers to catch the public’s attention, but the execution wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be. Also, kids get to attend for free, but all of the young kids that I saw seemed miserable, so I wouldn’t recommend bringing kids under the age of 5 here. In the future, the only way I would pay $ 20 to attend is if the featured presenter was somebody that I was REALLY excited about.

I always enjoy the Incredible Food Show. I was in line at 7am waiting to get go in for the early breakfeast for the 1^st 300 people. The breakfest was cook by the Sullivan University Culinary Students, we had scramble eggs, potatoes, sausage, coffee cake. I then walked for hours afterward enjoying the different vendors. I tried some ice cream called «Little Miss Piggy «from the comfy cow, I was brave to try this new flavor, it was vannilla ice cream w/​maple flavored pecans and bacon. Boy was that good. There were treats for the 4 legged friends. Lots of different kinds & brands of cheeses. The Noodle’s Company was there, the Lexington pasta, Food Co-​Op. There was the food show which featured «The Pioneer Lady» and mini seminors to food demonstration by the Sullivan University. I truely enjoyed it. Great Job.