Inaugural festival will mix food, fun of the Bull City



Excerpts: DURHAM - The annual Taste of Durham Festival transformed Brightleaf Square into a buffet for the senses Saturday, with music around every corner and food, beer and wine to suit every palette.

The festival, in just its second year, has a lot of growing to do before it's as big as the similarly themed Taste of Chicago, but some who have sampled both were already plumping for the Bull City version Saturday.

"It's cheaper, but the food's better," said Steve Rahn of Wake Forest, who moved down from the Chicago area with his wife Ann in August. "And less lines." Barbara and Loren Kennedy, who moved to Raleigh from Chicago six years ago, were also impressed. "We look for things we haven't seen, things we haven't tried," Barbara said.

There was certainly no shortage of choice. The restaurants threw their doors open and cooking demonstrations were held in the courtyard. The adjacent parking lot was filled with food vendors offering everything from Brazilian sausage to humus to shrimp with grits to filet steak wrapped in bacon.

The beer- and wine-tasting tents also stayed full.Š.The children's entertainment included Donovan Zimmerman of Paperhand Puppet Intervention out of Alamance County, who performed with a variety of papier mache masks including the large white face of a character he called Mr. Big.

That wider scope included an ice-sculpting competition, won by Todd Dawson of Ice Occasions in Raleigh. Dawson wowed the crowd by carving a design in under an hour that he'd conjured only the day before, a bust of a horse on an octagonal pedestal with spikes extending from each side.