Marblehead Festival of Arts Kicks Off In Style

Posted: July 1st, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Event, Marblehead | Tags: , | No Comments »

A chance to support the arts while drinking champagne and nibbling on goodies? Sign us up. The sky was gray over Sunday night’s Marblehead Festival of Arts Champagne Reception at Fort Sewall, but that deterred precisely no one from turning out in their summer finery, complete with lavishly decorated hats.

Fourteen local restaurants and bakeries donated food to the event, and attendees sipped and sampled while listening to lively Reggae and Caribbean tunes from Señor Perfecto & The One Drops.

It was a great chance to get a taste of a variety of dishes, and we found lots to like (and a few that weren’t worth the calories). The Landing provided hot, creamy clam chowder and a wonderfully spicy crab cake. Also in the fried-nuggets-of-goodness category were crunchy arancini from Caffe Italia.

Best sandwich goes to Jack-Tar’s pulled pork sliders (a bit hard to eat but truly delicious), followed closely by Manhattan Sandwich, which had many deli selections and adorable cups of cole slaw. (By the way, we’ve tried several varieties of sandwiches from Manhattan on recent picnics and recommend them. They offer a variety of extremely fresh bread including pumpernickel and bulkie rolls, the meats and cheeses are high quality and generous, and the condiments and pickles are deli-worthy.)

We give Foodie’s Feast (above) best overall table with a great looking display of bite-sized meat pies, brownies, and mini-chip pound cake that never seemed to dwindle. Other desserts included cookies from Starlight Creatives and a dense Mediterranean almond cake called nammoura we’re hoping we can order at Le Bistro.

We were disappointed that Sticky Rice ran out of Thai food before the event was half over, and although the cakes from Ladycakes looked good, they were freezing cold and thus had no flavor. Fortunately, the Cook’s champagne (surprisingly dry) held out, as did the band, so these issues were easily overlooked.

This is a fun event for a great cause—if you plan to attend next year, we suggest going early for the best food experience and buying one of the logo wineglasses to make sure you don’t spill a drop of champagne.

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