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This last weekend was the Bend Summer Festival ("SummerFest" for the rest of us, it's shorter and easier to say) and despite my expressed ambivalence in the past toward the various seasonal festivals around here, we went on Saturday and had a pretty good time.

The weather was decent while we were there, except for a brief interlude during which it downpoured rain—about five minutes worth, and then the mini-squall moved on. Typical Central Oregon weather, though sooner or later some local will trot out the old chestnut about it snowing on the Fourth of July...

There's great shopping to be found there—for adults. The kids got bored pretty quickly as we wandered among the various tents. I got bored after a while, too; there's only so many arts and crafts you can look at before they start blurring together. Ultimately we did buy two framed prints from a photographer, and my wife got a bracelet and a scarf/wrap thing.

The children's section was great. Like last year, it was sponsored by the Working Wonders Children's Museum and had a bunch of fun and educational things to do. The best part was the bird house building; Home Depot had donated crates of kid-friendly bird house kits (seven pre-cut board plus nails and screws) and kids could assemble them and take them home for free. Well, kids and adults; I ended up putting together most of the two we took. But it was still a very cool idea.

Food—good (mmmm Philly cheesesteak sandwich...); alcohol—good but some confusion reigned as to when they could start serving. OLCC rules say not until noon, but no one was allowed to start til sometime after that, not sure why... regardless, my wife finally got to taste some good wines and I had a beer (only had time for one), a tasty Ropewalk Amber from BridgePort Brewing. There was a big selection of other beers on their sheet, too, I was impressed.

We didn't catch any music—a consequence of having small kids who are impatient—but it was still a pretty good SummerFest. I like it best of the various Bend seasonal festivals.

So on the spur of the moment this evening we decided to go to this year's first Munch 'n Music and have dinner. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be any good website source for Munch 'n Music, so for those of you not from Bend, here's the three-second explanation:

Thursday evenings during the summer in Bend, free concerts in Drake Park are accompanied by food and craft vendors, and a beer garden. Parking is hell.

This was the first one we'd been to in years, so the beer garden was new to me. We didn't stay for the full concert—we never do, really, with young kids—but we did enjoy Pilot Butte Drive-in's cheeseburgers and fries. We hadn't had them since forever and they were utterly delicious. It's the only place you can get Pilot Butte after lunchtime these days! Score! The kids had Pizza Mondo. I was totally jonesing for some elephant ears, but the line was too long and we were on the way out.

My wife got a new toe ring and the kids got an ice cream bar and cotton candy. It was a fruitful trip.

One of these days we'll try staying for the full concert. And I will get some elephant ears!

Update: My wife found the website... it's www.munchandmusic.com. Go figure. Couldn't find it on the search engines, so that's saying something.

I don't get out to many of the local festivals, but we did hit the Bite of Bend last Saturday, so here's my mini-review. Actually, the one thing I really wanted to see at the Bite of Bend was the Iron Chef competition among six local chefs, and I got to see a bit of that—so this review will probably focus more on that than anything else :).

They had closed off most of the Old Mill District—the main drag between the parking lots at the movie theater and the smokestack building—and even so, we were able to find parking in the theater lot fairly easily. At the time we got there (around 11:30), most of the upper lot (above the theater) was empty, too. That's pretty good for an event like this, particularly in Bend.

Decent selection of food, too, and just okay on the beer. When you see a sign saying, "Beer garden" I guess you expect more than four beers on tap. Although, in addition to the one wine vendor, the Bendistillery was there serving up hard alcohol. Nice!

Actually, the food selection was more than decent; to me it seemed like a lot and a good variety. There could have been more—Pilot Butte Burgers would have been nice, for instance—but c'est la vie.

Didn't pay any real attention to the music. That's about all I can say about that.

Ah, but the Iron Chef competition was fun. I actually only got to wander over to it three times (everyone else thought I was weird to get excited about it), but I managed to see the start of the first contest—secret ingredient (tombo tuna) and all—and come back later to watch the matches in action. I don't know who won any of the match-ups, though. And I don't think they had to make more than one dish (unlike the TV show, which requires four or five), but it was still a lot of fun to watch. Interestingly, Standard TV and Appliance had set up a big screen HDTV off to the side and had two camera guys filming the competition up close—so you could watch the details on the TV. I was hoping they were recording it all and would broadcast it on the local cable channel, but I haven't seen anything about that.

It would have been cool to have someone doing an intelligent (i.e., knowledgeable about food and cooking) running commentary, but I guess not everyone's as into the Iron Chef thing as I am. Regardless, I hope they do this again. Maybe they could do it at some of the other festivals and not just Bite of Bend...?

Any other Bendites have reviews they'd like to post here?

So who's going to the Bite of Bend this Saturday? We were thinking of it but likely won't go if the weather's rainy like they're predicting.

Although I really want to see the first annual Iron Chef Competition they're having—six local chefs in three one hour matches, just like the TV show. The Source has a good listing of the chefs and judges involved. Sounds cool! We'll see, we'll see.

And someone really should buy up the domain name biteofbend.com and give them a proper site...

The Bend Brew Fest is kicking off this year at the Les Schwab Amphitheater, on Saturday, August 21. Excellent! Not quite a contender with the awesome Oregon Brewers Festival, but very cool nonetheless.

From the Les Schwab Amphitheater Events page:

On Saturday, August 21st over 20 Pacific Northwest brewers will present over 40 craft beers for public tasting at the Les Schwab Amphitheater for the first annual Bend Brew Fest.

Event hours are Noon to 10pm. Cost of admission is $10 for an advance ticket or $15 at the gate. Included in the cost of admission are a commemorative tasting mug and two tasting tokens. One token is required for each beer sample. Token costs are $1 apiece.