Pimento Cheese Festival

This weekend I happened to be near my sister who lives in Cary, NC and the town of Cary was hosting the Pimento Cheese Festival with lots of food trucks, local brews & music so how could I not go.  My sister joined me and we spent a warm spring afternoon perusing the offerings and sweating a little bit.

They had two or three blocks of a street cordoned off with food & beverage trucks and tents lining one side and seating interspersed as well as a couple of “beer gardens” that were clusters of tables near the alcohol sources.  Our plan coming in was to walk the length and see what was available and then pick a favorite.  Each of the food vendors was supposed to have at least one selection for the event that included pimento cheese.  Not a surprising requirement.

Almost immediately we upon arrival we heard some rumbling about the trucks being out of the pimento cheese options and we saw that confirmed with more than one erased / scratched out / covered up menu entry as we strolled the truck line.  There were a number of good sounding choices and while we didn’t choose either of these I snapped pics because one was a cool little Airstream looking trailer that was a bakery / cafe vendor and the other because, well BACON!  If the line for that truck hadn’t been so long it would have been a lock.

When we got to the end we decided a beverage would make line standing and waiting more palatable.  Our choice was really local being a Cary business, Fortnight Brewing and I like supporting local businesses even when it’s not my locality.  They’d sold out of their amber ale and I was in no mood for yet another IPA.  The one with kambucha sounded just too weird so the Off With Her Red, raspberry sour ale got the nod.

It was a good choice for the warm day being light, berry flavored and smooth in spite of the sour moniker.  We got to see the band warming up and met several dogs and their humans as we waited in line.

After securing the beverages we walked back to the truck of choice which was Baguettaboutit.  A truck that served locally sourced sausages in fresh baked baguettes.   The pimento cheese plan to a hit right from the outset as they came out and covered up two selections just as we got in line and of course one was the requisite PC option.  We decided to stay anyway in part because it reminded us of the hot dogs we got at school in Switzerland that were served in a baguette.  Nostalgia can be a powerful motivator.

One thing I thought was a nice touch and different from all the other trucks I’ve visited over the last few years is that instead of getting your name and yelling it out when your selection was ready they handed out playing cards with some advertising, a card number and suit and that’s what they called out when your food was ready.  I thought it was clever.

I got the U Betcha, which was a bratwurst with coarse ground beer garden mustard shoved in that baguette and Lynn got the It’s Greek Tu Me which was a chicken spinach sausage with tzatziki sauce.  Interestingly both sausages had some unadvertised spiciness as well which was fine with me but my sister didn’t enjoy it quite as much and didn’t finish her sausage.  So I can tell you definitively that both were good since there were not going to be any abandoned sausages on my watch.  Oh and the baguettes were absolutely great.

So while all I saw of actual pimento cheese was one guy guarding a sandwich like it was his “precious” and a pimento cheese roll from the Filipino truck on the ground that someone either dropped or abandoned, overall it was a nice meal.  Like several recent meals, made better by the company of family.  I don’t know if this is a regular annual event but if it is I’d recommend it for a drive for a delicious diversion.