Kansas City Ethnic Festival

On Saturday, Dean and I went to the 2007 Kansas City Ethnic Festival at Swope Park in KC. It was a 3-day event featuring food, crafts, and performances from 61 different cultures ranging from Argentina to Wales.

For dinner, we had Greek stuffed grape leaves, Turkish stuffed grape leaves, Serbian moussaka, Irish bangers, Lithuanian bacon buns, Lithuanian Chocolate-Raspberry Torte, and Norwegian blueberry kringles. We actually didn't try as much food as we had intended to, but a combination of long lines and getting full early kept us from it. The majority of the food was very reasonably priced, often $1-$2. Some it was not, as some dishes went for $5-$7. The Irish booth tried to get me to buy their $3 lemonade, but I chose the 50c lemonade from Turkey.

In addition to the food, most booths had a small table with ethnic crafts. About 1/3 of it was just plain junk -- plastic jewelry or little kids toys. About 1/3 of it was decent quality stuff. I remember especially the wooden masks and decorative beads from Kenya and some of the Japanese tea sets. About 1/3 of it was somewhere in between these two extremes.

Every half hour there was an on-stage performance from a different nation. We sat and watched a little of the Philippines and caught just a little bit of Ecuador doing various dances.

The weather was wonderful. We went late in the day, and it cooled down dramatically at about 5pm.

In addition to the ethnic variety of the booths, there really was a huge variety in participants. I mentioned to Dean that I didn't think I had ever seen such a variety of people in one place before.