Tummy Tuesday : Main Gate Square Culinary Challenge on Saturday

Tummy Tuesday : Main Gate Square Culinary Challenge on Saturday

Tummy Tuesday is here!  Add your links to the blog hop below my post.  My post is long so scroll way down!

Main Gate Square Culinary Challenge featured free food on Saturday night, July 21, 2018, where judges and the audience sampled free food from the various food places at the Main Gate Square.  Turns out the real challenge was getting to each table to sample the food!  It was super crowded and you jumped into a line and hoped you landed somewhere good.

My first line led me past Campus Candy & Yogurt who were handing out long strips of candy.  As you know, I’m on a weight loss challenge so I virtuously gave it up, only to lose my virtue to the next table which gave out Woops pistachio macarons sliced into quarters.  Facepalms.  Woops is right. I’m so dead.  I took one.  It was soooo little.  My diet will survive. Yum!

Campus Candy & Yogurt (plus they gave out a coupon for one yogurt with the second one free.  Temptation city! And they have retro candy.)
Woops

Next was The Fix who bill themselves as Arizona’s Mac n’ Chz HQ.  They were handing out little plastic cups of hot gooey cheesey macaroni-loved it!  This was a slippery slope I’m on.  But the cups are tiny like small salsa cups.  Surely that’s not so bad.  Everyone deserves comfort food now and again.  Oh great! Next to them was Caffe Luce Coffee Roasting Co. giving out iced cold brew coffee.  Delicious and no calories.  I love cold brew.  All the caffeine without the bitterness of iced coffee.

The Fix Caffe Luce Coffee Roasting Co.

Next up was FukuSushi with fried rice and potstickers.  Taking photos was not easy.  I am juggling with holding the camera in one hand, wearing a backpack, and holding the food in the other hand while taking the photo.  With FukuSushi, I found that if I am holding the previous table’s empty cup, I can’t take the photo because then I start dropping stuff.  So I slurped up the crunchy potsticker and tasty fried rice and promised myself I’d stop by their place soon to take a regular photo.  Plus I was still sipping on my cold brew.  I seriously needed another pair of arms like the Hindi Goddess.

Oh good, a trashcan near my next line and in goes all my empty cups.  This line is taking forever so I looked ahead.  Oh I see the problem.  One table had just run out of food so two lines were merging into one.  No wonder it was crazy slow.  I jumped lines to one in the middle and thought I’d go back to the other long line once things settled down.

Yay, next up was Indian food. Kababeque Indian Grill dished out Chicken Tikka Masala, Vindaloo and rice.  A lovely welcome bit of spicy goodness in a bigger helping, not a tiny spoonful.  Diet?  What diet?  Digs in and steps into the next line.  Oh, look! We are back at dessert.  Well breakfast but it tastes like dessert.  The Dutch was serving up mini poffertjes, a Dutch pancake with compote and powdered sugar.

Kababeque Indian Grill The Dutch

Now the Dutch was pretty smart.  They had a little glass case showing a couple other offerings at their eatery so you wouldn’t go away thinking they were just a breakfast place.  Well, actually I’d eat apple pie for breakfast.  No taste test on these babies though.

The Dutch The Dutch

I gazed around the room like a hunter stalking their next prey.  Which line was the shortest?  I took the bus and they don’t run as late on Saturdays so like Cinderella my time was running out.  I went back to the long line that had been merging.  Well, darn! They’re all out now.  Ok, that one was gone too.  Hey, that line looks good.  Wonder what’s next.

Espresso Art Cafe had drinks but they ran out just as I got to the table.  I helped the lady in front of me tilt the container to get out the last vestiges of the iced tea.  I think the event was much more popular than people expected.  Next to them was No Anchovies serving two choices of pizza.  One was buffalo chicken with bleu cheese.  Winter would love that one but I am not a bleu cheese fan so I chose the less adventurous choice.  Crispy crust. Melty cheese. OMG! How I missed pizza!

No Anchovies No Anchovies

Tick Tock.  I’m running out of time here.  I latched onto the next line.  Gentle Ben’s handed out fresh tortilla chips with shrimp ceviche.  Right next to them, Jimmy’s Pita & Poke gave up their last as I walked up.  Too late again! Ah well.  I stepped past them and picked up a salad from Panera.  Now that Panera’s cookies have run out, their line drifted away. Yay!  A salad.  I can end on a virtuous note. I do love the bit of feta cheese with the fresh greens.  I picked up one of the last three.  At least I made it in time.

Gentle Ben’s Gentle Ben surveys the madness

There were a few more tables and lines out there but like Cinderella I had to go if I wanted to catch my last bus.  Feeling pleasantly stuffed, I walked the quarter mile to my stop.

Main Gate Square is huge so these eateries and a lot of other shopping places fill the space.  The Marriot hosted the event that lasted from 7-10pm.  I asked the desk as I was leaving how many people did they think had drifted in and he guessed more than 900.  No wonder it was crazy crowded.

I was only able to sample about half the food and drinks.  If they do this next year, I will arrive earlier.  As the Main Gate Square was bigger than I expected, it took me awhile to find the event. Due to my bus constraints (buses stop early on weekends! how crazy is that?), I left at 8:30 to catch the last one home. So I was not able to hear what the popular and judges votes came to which the announcer said would be at 9pm.

Despite the lines, I loved being able to taste a little bit of something from lots of different places.  The little cups were perfect sizes so you didn’t fill up on one thing and could sample lots.

The food I sampled:
Caffe Luce Coffee Roasting Co.
Campus Candy
The Dutch Eatery & Refuge
The Fix, Arizona’s Mac n Chz Headquarters
Fuku Sushi Tucson
Gentle Ben’s
Kababeque Indian Grill
No Anchovies!
Panera Bread
Woops
I was not able to sample :
Americano Mexicano
The Buffalo Spot
Espresso Art Café
Frog and Firkin
Geronimo Restaurant
Illegal Pete’s
Jimmy’s Pita & Poke
Sinbads
Starbucks

 

Tummy Tuesday

Roundup of last week’s Tummy Tuesday (7/17-7/23/18):

1. Union Public House : Mary (cactus catz)
2. A Simple Garden Salad – My Slice of Mexico
3. Me-n-Ed’s Classic Combination – Comedy Plus
4. Meatball Carbonara – Ladyleemanila
5. Chocolate Lamingtons – Elsie Hagley
6. Pumpernickel – Cactus Haiku
7. Lucky Cat Ramen – iScriblr

This week’s Tummy Tuesday (7/24-7/30/18):

Join the Tummy Tuesday’s blog hop. Post anything about food: a restaurant review, a recipe, food photography, a funny food quote, a food song, an essay on food — anything food-related because you know like the song says, “Food, glorious food.” Add your food blog post link below.

 

30 Replies to “Tummy Tuesday : Main Gate Square Culinary Challenge on Saturday”

    1. Thanks for adding your link in the comments. I hope you don’t mind but I added hte link up into the blog hop so the food pic would show. It’s one of the things I miss about Daily Post is being able to scan the pics. I wish the pics were bigger though. There’s another blog hop type link where the pics are bigger so I am consdiering it but it’s more expensive.

      1. Sure thing. I’ll keep an eye out for it. Funny I’ve not seen it before as your posts are notification enabled So should appear in my alerts…

        1. You might be watching Cactus Haiku. I have it up on Cactus Catz. Almost all the people that have joined me for Tummy Tuesdays are poets or writers coming over from Cactus Haiku because I’ve had that one just a bit longer. I think writing goes with food.

            1. You go to Cactus Catz sometimes already. It’s Tucson life (Arizona, USA) rather than literary. I appreciate it that you keep up with Cactus Haiku everyday. That’s a lot and I appreciate the audience/support/thinking of another word here and I had it for a sec but mind now draws a blank-it’ll come to me after I hang up I know it. Ah well.

                1. You found the design one? Cool. Hope it’s not boring for you as I’m trying to marry the photography with the making stuff and playing with Photoshop/Topaz. I need to learn to inject more personality there because it’s more doing stuff. I tend to think sharing stuff like local art and food or literary stuff like poetry/fiction is more interesting to view as a reader. I don’t really follow a lot of blogs of people doing stuff unless it’s tutorials on a technique I want to learn. I found out something about tutorials — they take a looong time to write compared to a haiku. Runs back to Cactus Haiku, lol.

                  1. I just like stuff tha’ts different from what I know and my world and I love creativity and how it’s expressed. I know what you mean about time I have been struggling so much since the end of Armitage. I am busier at work and at home and it can be late before I get in front of my pc and the best I can muster is a dozen quick pieces.

                    1. laughing, “a DOZEN quick pieces”! cracking up. I couldn’t manage a dozen quick pieces. Maybe 3. 4 on a very good day but they have to be all 5-7-5 poems.

                    2. I have a bit of a short attention span sometimes so I put an hour a side and probably do a dozen if I put 2 hours aside I can often complete enough to last a few days if I’m feeling inspired

                    3. that’s pretty fast — a dozen in two hours. I can do about one haiku in 15-30 minutes. A picture adds more time unless i already know the one i want to use.

    1. No worries. Once it hit me you did Feline Friday, I knew to look on comedy plus’ feline friday blog hop on my page. Sorry I was slow on the uptake. A lot of people do both blogspot and wp.

    1. lol, uh huh. Fuku means “luck” or “lucky”. So “lucky sushi”. Sounds good to me. Yeah the Tikka Masala was good and I agree on the bread. I love naan.

    1. lol, sorry, it’s too late! Lotsa little bites though. Maybe the idea will get popular and you’ll have one in your area. Yeah, the macarons were good.

      you too, have a tummytastic week!

  1. You’re the one on a diet, but let me tell you about my weight loss that I didn’t even try to do. Last Thursday I had an abscess in my mouth. I went to emergency and the doctor drained the abscess in three different places. To say it was sore after that was an understatement. I was given a steroid and an antibiotic shot and sent to the pharmacy for more antibiotics to take for 14 days. I went home and didn’t eat anything except breakfast that day. The next day I tried to eat. Not a good thing. The third day I couldn’t eat. Swallowing was most difficult. Today is Tuesday and I weighed myself. I’m down 5.6 pounds from what I weighed in the hospital on Thursday. Not a good way to lose weight.

    That being said I would love to eat some of each of the dishes you have here. I would gladly eat them, if I could.

    Have a fabulous day, my friend. ♥

    1. Oh wow, I am sorry about the abscess. I’ve heard those can hurt like the devil. Can you eat yet? What about soup or a smoothie at least? Yeah, not a way I’d like to lose weight.

      Maybe when your absess heals you can eat the mac and cheese — that’s soft and the cheese is comfy.

      hope your week gets better

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