Taste of the Carolinas

The Taste of the Carolinas is an event happening at Carowinds on Saturdays and Sundays. It ends this coming weekend, so you need to hurry on down. More info here.

I had been to Taste of Columbus where you buy tickets and different restaurants have booths set up. I assumed this would be the same, but it wasn't. It appears that the Carowinds Chef (also a workamper, though I haven't met him) designed the menus and the food was prepared on site and served by Carowinds food and beverage employees.

There were kiosks from about a dozen areas of the Carolinas with different foods from each region. The kiosks were in two different areas of the park, so that was a bit of a challenge, particularly since we were both tired and hungry by the time we got there.

I had studied the menu options and the one thing I wanted to try was Vanilla Coke Boiled Peanuts over Ice Cream. Why? It sounded like nothing I'd ever tried before and it involved ice cream. So, first stop was the Calabash kiosk.

Did I mention that the people serving the food were Carowinds food and beverage employees? Well, the two knuckleheads working at the Calabash stand were not the stars of the employee pool. Our conversation went something like this.

Me: Hi, I'd like the Vanilla Coke Boiled Peanuts over Ice Cream
Knucklehead number one: Uhhhh.
Turns to stare at K2. "Do we have any more ice cream?"
K2: Uhhh. (pauses to wipe drool off side of mouth). No.
Me: Well, all-righty then.

Fortunately things were better at our next stop...

Asheville/Mountain region
We got the cheese plate. Nice, but probably not the most interesting choice. There were different wines and beers at each location too, though we didn't have any. That would have made the cheese more interesting.

We also got the Smoked Trout Rillette Flatbread and that was very tasty.

Then we meandered over to Charleston region for Shrimp and Grits. Yum.

Finally we stopped at the Low Country Region where we had Frogmore Stew (which did NOT include frogs). It had sausage and shrimp and rice. Sort of like Jambalaya but not as spicy. I liked it the best of the dishes we tried.

At this same spot, we also got a Sweet Potato Dumpling, which was very good too.

If you'd like to make your own Sweet Potato Dumplings, here's the recipe. 

All in all, I'm glad we went. It was a cool night and even though we'd both worked and ended up walking about two miles by the time all was said and done, it was fun and I got some material for a blog post. A win-win for everyone.