By Jena Seidemann
Student Life Editor

 As a food fanatic, I highly anticipated the annual Zest Fest food festival in Irving, but as I sit back and relish on the past weekend event, I find myself underwhelmed and unsatisfied.

My first run in with Zest Fest was last year, and I loved it, but this year seemed different, or at least not what I expected it to be.

It would be a great way to spend a calm Sunday afternoon and stroll the aisles for one to two hours with friends if you love powerful flavors.

Zest Fest showcased the creativity and innovation of all the vendors. Flavors I have never thought of before showed up at various stations. One recurring flavor was white raspberry chocolate in dips and spreads.

Some of my favorite products that were showcased were the baked enchilada dip mix from Carmie’s Kitchen, Sweet Ed’s medium salsa, Ozark Mountain dessert coffee’s turtle and apricot brandy dessert coffee, Sweet and Saucy’s raspberry fudge sauce and Papa Perry’s Pepper Product’s strawberry jam. Everything was priced pretty reasonably; it reminded me of a hot sauce farmers market actually.

It was a little overwhelming sometimes, but then again, I was surrounded by food, so I could not complain.

However, it was expensive. At $15 a ticket with another $8 for parking, before you entered the doors, it was already a $23 plus dollar venture depending on how many people accompanied you. It is OK to charge an entry fee, but I would have liked for it to be within the $5 to $10 range, max.

I never understood why I would have to pay that amount of money for people to sell me items, that I in turn would buy and therefore spend more money. For those that took advantage of the guest chefs and their seminars, the price is somewhat justified, but if you were only there to sample, it was a little pricy.

]After a while, the whole thing began to mush together. Within 30 minutes, I got lost, and the sauces and their flavors began to blend to where I could not tell what was what. It almost got to a point where someone would ask me how something tasted and I could not feel my tongue because I tried almost everything.

Another downside is that there were no water fountains, and since Zest Fest featured many spicy foods, there was a need for water or some other liquid to quench your thirst and to subside the burn. You would have to buy a $3 water or $2 milk in order to stay hydrated; even more money.

They products were excellent and flavorful, but if I were to sum it up, it would be hot sauce, BBQ sauce, toffee and dip fest because that is really all they had. The only actual “food” free samples that I saw was one sausage place and a stand selling soup. To the festival’s credit, the vendors are based off of who signs up, so there was not really anyway to control what would be there.

Another downside was that most of the samples were fed with pretzels. As petty as that sounds, I am thinking about my gluten-free friends out there. There would be no way for some of them to eat certain samples because the only way they could eat the dips and whatnot was with pretzels, and almost every stand had pretzels to serve the samples. So, to explain why this is significant, what if someone who was gluten intolerant paid all that money to enter the festival and find that most of the stuff they wanted to try they could not; just a thought.

There should be alternatives for them, but that would be at the discretion of the vendors, and yes, gluten allergies are only a small percentage of the population, but it is still something to think about.

Strollers and wheelchairs might not be a good idea because of the limited space. All of the booths were neatly organized, but the number of people caused it to be very cluttered like any other festival. There were a lot of “excuse me’s” and “sorry’s” exchanged as everyone unintentionally ran into everyone.

Overall, this festival was not for the faint hearted. One must know where they want to go and patiently and ambitiously jump in to get samples. However, if you love hot sauce and are willing to wade through the crowds to try some, this would be the place to spend a weekend afternoon. As for me, I am not sure I would attend again.