Carolyn Fath
On his Twitter account last month, Yum Yum Fest co-organizer Jonny Hunter wrote, “I think that [Yum Yum Fest] is the best food festival in the country.” He may have a bit of an objectivity problem, understandably, but he’s not all wrong. Yum Yum Fest, which just wrapped its third annual event on Sunday, Aug. 21, is a gem.
A soothing breeze blew scattered clouds across an otherwise sunny sky that echoed the blue lollipop wrappers of this year’s logo. Even if the foods hadn’t been amazing (and for the most part, they were) it was still a fine afternoon for strolling in Central Park, watching skateboarders rise and fall on their concrete swells just down the way.
I was over the moon for the printed menu handed out at the gates. The dish descriptions were printed there in the same level of detail as on the signs at each booth, and offered a handy checklist for those already struggling to keep their completionism at bay.
Carolyn Fath
The Fuzzy Navel 2.0, with gummi garnish.
The cocktail area was an improvement over previous Yum Yums, with one wide, centralized counter serving all four cocktail recipes, plus wine pours. A refreshing and on-trend Watermelon “Frosé” kicked first, but my favorite was the Fuzzy Navel 2.0, jazzed up from the standard recipe with vermouth and peach blossom tea, but brought back down to earth with a sour peach gummi ring as garnish. Beers from Potosi, Lakefront, New Glarus and the Wisconsin Distributors umbrella had their own tables.
Payment was also smoother this year. I remarked last year that the line to purchase tickets to then trade in for food and drink was an efficiency and convenience liability, and this year consumers handed cash directly to the food vendors. It seemed like most, if not all, restaurants had a dedicated payment handler, for those concerned about hygiene. Cash is filthy, but it’s fast.
Kyle Nabilcy
From Forequarter, a green chorizo arepa with herb salad and Cesar's queso fresco.
A number of kitchens took their offerings in a direction their menus don’t typically go. Forequarter went deliciously South American by plating an adorable mini version of its green chorizo with an arepa and queso fresco. Patrick DePula of Salvatore’s displayed more of his skill with Italian-American dishes, cooking a savory and aromatic veal rotolo saltimbocca. This one was hard to eat with a plastic fork.
Kyle Nabilcy
Truffled chicken dumplings with foie gras torchon from Grampa's.
Easily the most flipped-out-over stylistic departure was that of Grampa’s Pizzeria, which is making a habit of doing this kind of thing for Yum Yum. Two meaty, slightly seared dumplings filled with truffled chicken were served under coins of foie gras torchon and freshly shaved black truffle and a little puddle of jus. The line was all the way across to the other side of the festival grounds, and had to bend so people weren’t knocking over the vegetables at the farmers’ market booth. Were the dumplings worth the hype? In a word: unintelligible grunt of approval.
Carolyn Fath
Red curry suckling pig from Heritage Tavern.
I appreciated the heft of the red curry suckling pig dish served by Heritage Tavern, as well as the crunch of both its crust and the accompanying peanuts, but the rice was a touch paste-y and the whole dish fought mightily against one-handed consumption. Dishes that can’t be eaten one-handed are the cardinal sin of an event like Yum Yum.
Osteria Papavero served a crunchy and salty fritto misto, with tender octopus, shrimp, and whitefish — sometimes in a cute paper cone, other times not, for some reason. Sujeo, similarly, delivered meaty hunks of perfectly fried rockfish under a spicy and pungent sauce, and the immediacy of cook-serve-eat kept that thin fried exterior crisp. Madison Sourdough served a very pretty dish of corn grits with blueberries and excellent smoked salmon, a dish for which there was never a line; pity.
Four different booths served lamb. Banzo’s savory lamb kebab skewered on a cinnamon stick was a crafty way to marry those two often-paired Middle Eastern ingredients. Sanford, one of three restaurants visiting from Milwaukee, was busy rendering fat from slices of roasted lamb belly, which were paired with remarkably flavorful hop leaf tabbouleh and a really terrific apricot yogurt.
Oliver’s Public House doesn’t tend to cook too far from continental Europe, but oh man, it’s welcome to do so any time. Toasty chapati bread (India) with chickpea mash (the Levant, generally), chopped and frizzled merguez sausage (North Africa), spicy green zhug (North Africa and Israel), and a little sprinkle of feta (Greece) took me on a wild round trip of the Mediterranean in a paper boat.
Carolyn Fath
This year's cocktail area was a well-arranged success.
And if you somehow needed dessert at the end of all this, there were fun little filled doughnuts -- sufganiyot, an Israeli treat served around Hanukkah — from Adamah in the Hillel building, and push pops from Underground Butcher. The very melty mint chocolate one was good, but the more frozen sweet corn and blueberry one was better.
Yum Yum organizers said they intended to provide better service to vegetarians this year; half of this year’s dishes appeared with a symbol on the menu, indicating their vegetarian modifiability. Next year, one or two items for the shorter set might be in order. A friend who has a 7-year-old lamented the limited options for his kiddo, wishing that the Wisconsin Cheese booth served toasted cheese sandwiches.
It was that friend’s first time at Yum Yum, and he said he’d be back for sure. He called it the cheapest and best tasting menu in Madison, and with that sentiment, I agree fully.
