Aug 8, 2022
Written By: H.Couch
Where do I start? Vegfest 2022 Denver Colorado. I was really looking forward to seeing and trying some vegan food carts all in one place. When you are vegan or plant based, it seems like exclusively vegan restaurants are hard to come by, so having multiple choices in one place was like a dream come true. Mexican, BBQ, Poke, Desserts. How to choose one or two or three was going to be the hard part. But the choice became fairly easy after a quick walk around. First, the Fools Gold BBQ that I had read about from the event page and wanted to try, had a last minute cancellation! The Mexican food cart, Cholo Ass Vegan, which I would also like to try, had at least a 30 to 45 minute wait. And to top it all off, the dessert I wanted, Palisade Peach Cheesecake all sold out. Really, this was not off to a good start.
But let’s touch on the start, you have to pay $13 dollars a person each day or $20 for the weekend just to walk down the street and for what? Volunteers? Rental use of a bar? Permits? Guest speakers? I am not really sure because you still had to pay for food at each food cart separately. A family of 4 would cost $52 just to get in the door, or I mean street, let alone what it will cost for food. All the food carts were parked on a side street and the back of a bar called Improper City. They did have some guest speakers inside the bar talking about health and athletics, but we were not there to listen to them, we were there to eat. What exactly was the entry fee paying for? To be able to walk around and purchase Vegan products? I think that this whole Vegan Food festival was a real letdown. The idea of a vegan food festival is great, have all vegan companies show up at one place and promote their businesses. But, why are they charging us just to show up?
It was easy to choose once we were there, the lines. Normally I would gravitate towards the ones with the long lines, but did I really want to wait over a half hour in the hot sun for some Fuego Elote, a delicious Mexican street corn and a Horchata, NOPE! Granted it looked amazing and it probably was, but again not sure that I wanted to wait a half hour plus for it. I’ll just watch Cholo Ass Vegan’s Facebook page and go visit on a different day. It would be less crowded and I could enjoy without resentment of having to wait so long. Then there was The Hungry Treehugger with Palisade Peach Cheesecake, omg, I love Palisade Peaches. Of course, we are going to have to share one of those, NOPE, they were all out! Why didn’t they tell me when I was doing a drive by that the three pieces in the display case was all that’s available? I would have bought one right then and there. I mean we are only three hours into the day and they are out, this is not going well.
As we were circling the food choices a food cart called Saucy Cluckers was serving Buffalo Chick’n Totchos, the line was much more manageable. Jon’s favorite, tater tots made into nachos. That was an instant choice as you can guess for Jon. The Totchos were very good and had a nice creamy cheese sauce atop layers of lettuce, tater tots, Chick’n, and buffalo sauce. We would definitely eat food from Saucy Cluckers again, they rocked it!
Until, never again, Vegfest, sorry.
In the end, with the entry fee and food cost, spending $40 dollars for a nacho is absolutely absurd. Unless they drop their entry fee to get in and allow us to spend more of that money on the vendors that took their time and effort to get there, I think that we will steer clear of this in the future. We would rather just visit the food carts and support them directly. Kind of sad to say.
Thanks for wandering with us,
The Wandering Couchs
