Many Paths: It's time for a new food festival in Galesburg. Here are my ideas

As the summer approaches we have many festivities coming in the near future. First Fridays on Seminary Street, Taste of Galesburg, Railroad Days, the Knox County Fair, and more. Summer in Galesburg has events happening and I'm looking forward to it.

While all of these events are good, I think we should work on cultivating another yearly event or festival.

I’ve long believed that we should decide on a definitive food or foods of Galesburg. Canonical foods for us to emphasize that we can claim as our cuisine. As far as contenders for those foods, I’ve come up with three: chicken and noodles, breaded pork tenderloin, and taco pizza.

These aren’t the only ones that it could be, but just what I’ve come up with.

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Now, none of those foods are truly unique to Galesburg, but they are unique to our region. They are a part of our local culture.

Other regionally unique foods have their own festivals or competitions. Like there’s the Cuban Sandwich Festival held every year in Tampa, FL. There is Bagelfest in New York City. In Texas, there are competitions for both their chili and barbeque. There is precedent for hosting festivals and competitions for regionally important foods.

I think Galesburg should develop either a festival or competition for one of these foods. It would be a way to solidify and celebrate a part of our local culture. It could also help solidify us as the destination in our region for whichever foods we decide on. We wouldn’t even need to choose just one. We could do pork tenderloins in the summer and chicken and noodles in the winter as a possible schedule.

As far as the risk to start this for Galesburg, the risks are comparatively small.

Sure, it’d take some resources to start, but this could start very small, see if there is any interest in it, and if there isn’t it just ends and not much is lost. This isn’t a big investment that the community would need to commit to with uncertain returns.

Relatively small investment, low risk, but has a possibility of a big upside someday. It would take multiple local organizations to bring it into fruition, but I think it would be something good that could be in the interest of many.

And I know there is interest in these foods, well I at the very least know about pork tenderloins. I follow multiple Facebook groups dedicated to restaurants serving tenderloins, the plate sized pork schnitzel on a regular sized burger bun. An albeit small group of enthusiasts are willing to travel to try different tenderloins, what if we were to host an event where you could try many?

Pork tenderloins do currently have one competition in Iowa put on by the Iowa Pork Producers but it’s just a voting competition, there is no judged competition or festival.

This could be an opportunity to create a real event in Galesburg for it. Maybe the first couple years it’d just be local restaurants participating but given enough years it could turn into a regionally known event that brings people from all over.

In conclusion, we have a few unique foods in our region that don’t have any events for celebrating them. We as a community should work on hosting an event for at least one, that could be its own event or attached to one of our other events like Railroad Days or Taste of Galesburg.

This would be a nice addition to our community’s yearly calendar. So, I look forward to someday attending a Galesburg Pork Tenderloin, Chicken and Noodles, Taco Pizza, or other festival or competition. At the very least we’d have an opportunity to try the best of our local favorites.

Joe Hicks is a Galesburg resident and Many Paths contributor.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Many Paths: We need more food festivals in Galesburg, Illinois