Taste of the Highlands

A fun afternoon picnic in the park!
Just the right amount of samples from the surrounding restaurants and drinks.
Impressed by the quality of the food each year.

Another good year!
Best fest ever. Nice mix of restaurants and dishes. Never gets boring.
Haven’t done VIP… not sure it is worth it…
Liked the voting this year — how it was done!

It was a great event! Looking forward to next year.

Taste of Highlands was very small and food was ok. I feel like there could be more food and some other drink beside beer and water. I don’t mind paying $ 60 for a fundraise and that money goes to a good cost but would I wouldn’t come back here next year.

Taste of the Highlands is a smallish tasting event, at least compared to such giants as Taste of Atlanta. I like it despite some flaws.
It’s somewhat crowded, has the usual inefficient check-​in process and there were long lines at either of only two beer stands (they could have used a third stand). And not enough places to sit. I really think events like this should include fold-​up chairs. Lots of them.
Wow, great food. I really liked Alma Cocina’s gazpacho, and Cypress St’s BBQ pork thing. Plus several others. Most of the food tables didn’t have long lines — the vendors were pretty good at setting the samples out so everything moved quickly. Long line for Flip’s slider, so I passed on that. In the end, I left satisfied, which doesn’t happen at some of these shindigs.
Parking is not as bad as you might imagine provided you’re willing to walk a few blocks. Virginia Highland has quite a bit of street parking in the neighborhood. For events here (not just this one), I like to park a couple of blocks in from Ponce and walk the five or six blocks to the event but there were spots as close as two blocks away when I arrived at 2:30.

I look forward to this every year! So fun to try food from the restaurants in my favorite neighborhood!

Great experience, as always. Not as many goodies this year, but the food was as good as ever. Music was great and the weather was PERFECT! We never miss it.

I had a fantastic time at Taste of the Highlands and the food was very good. Boy did I over do the tasting. Lots of good, good restaurants giving ample serving sizes that got me full very quickly.
Standouts for me were DBA (damn good b-​b-​q) and Cypress Street Pint and Plate (for the love of all that is precious they had mini Sublime burgers… swooning). I really liked that there was no need for cash at each vendor or tickets. Once you paid to get in, you could just eat up. I tasted a lot of items and still didn’t taste everything because I was stuffed. There was beer and wine and plenty of bottled water around. Also, there was live entertainment and lots of people brought along their chairs and blankets to eat and enjoy the day. Loved it.
I found the event well organized and not too big. I loved the location too, the very cute little John Howell Park.
What I really, really love is that the event benefits Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
The Unilocal tent was there representing and Keaton was doing his thing.
I will definitely attend this event again next year.

Had a great time! Food and drinks from local restaurants were just enough.

I love this event! I come here every year, regardless of the exoribitant price. And it is for charity after all. So many diverse tasty options to try. The only thing that kind of pisses me off is when certain restaurants try to «phone it in»… Like Mi Cucina, with all of their good Mexican fare, and they brought awful mango ceviche. And some place brought chilled shrimp with strawberries and cilantro… Disgusting. But i did enjoy many things… like the beer ice cream sandwich, that place that always brings the coffee and desserts, the two places that served the shredded pork bbq, the place that had the lobster bisque, some of the sliders from various places were good too. Anyway, see ya again next year!

My first time attending this event and I must say I was definitely impressed. Local restaurants and festival goers braved the less than sunny skies for a day of food, libations, and fun and it was well worth it. I didn’t get around to everybody but I was very pleased with the eats I did partake in. Special mention to Cypress with their sublime burger, doc chey’s, warren, osteria, atkins park, and ecco. Some of the places like STK were roped off in the VIP section so didn’t get a chance to try those. And loved the mason jar mini glasses from Belvedere Vodka with the lemonade tea. Very cute! I heard a couple of people outside the festival saying they weren’t going to pay that much for this (I think it was like $ 50?) but had they come in, they would’ve seen it would’ve been well worth it! I mean it was unlimited eats and drink! You’d probably pay the same amount for just ONE meal at just ONE of these places! I’ll be back next time!

Where else does $ 50 buy all-​you-​can-​eat noms from some of the best restaurants Atlanta has to offer? Taste of the Highlands does it right. One flat fee for all the bites and drinks you can handle in three hours. Best of all, the money goes to charity and that makes everything taste better.
Alcohol is included with this ticket purchase and you can upgrade the experience to VIP status for private, canopy seating and bathrooms with upgrades to alcohol and food selections.
Set in John Howell park on VIrginia Ave just a few yards from the Highland Triangle, the lush trees and ample street parking are more than enough reason to entice patrons. Combine that with live music, outstanding and well portioned tastes, and plenty of wine, beer, and hard liquor, you have one heck of an afternoon.
Join the email newsletter for deeper discount ticketing options. See you next year!

Let’s just put it this way… I have no plans for this coming Saturday evening (5÷18÷13), as I will be piled up on my sofa like a slug in a food-​induced coma, happily hurting from the excess of grub (and booze) in my belly consumed at Taste of the Highlands (TOTH).
This is probably my 6^th TOTH (disclaimer: I used to be on the committee when it first started — now I just go to enjoy), and it gets better and larger each year. Last year, my peeps were out of town/​busy (shame on them), so I didn’t have a wingman/​woman to attend the event with me. No matter, I went by myself, which was probably better (or worse) for eating/​drinking how much I wanted, when I wanted, and going back for thirds at several stations. No shame in my game. I was so stuffed that I had to sit down on the sidewalk and catch my breath before walking to my car, for realz.
My early bird ticket was only $ 40. To top it all off, it’s for an excellent cause, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Why WOULDN’T you want to go?

Lord have mercy. This place is heaven for foodies/​gluttoners alike. I absolutely loved that the money went to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. $ 35 per person is an absolute steal for the amount of food and alcohol that is provided. ABSOLUTE STEAL. We got there RIGHT at 2pm and were greeted by the most pleasant, wonderful check-​in staff ever. I love whomever checked us in. We later saw her at the Terrapin truck a few hours later, and she was still chipper and pleasant. So it was incredibly hot and that mixed with trying EVERY food stand and EVERY alcohol drink = me in the corner by the Terrapin truck moaning/​grumbling/​while T. ran around trying to get me water. Thank goodness I didn’t throw up. Free food + me do not mix. I tried mostly everything. Thanks to this event, I was introduced to HD1, reminded of the deliciousness that is jalapeño margaritas at Pozole’s, sampled a delicious cheesesteak that ALMOST taste like Philadelphia at Woody’s among other things. I’m surprised this place wasn’t as packed as I expected. Can’t wait for next year!

So wonderfully food coma inducing I could cry.
We got here are two on the dot, drank as much wine and fancy drinks as we could imbibe and ate as much food as we pleased. The bluegrass band was awesome too. Stayed til the very end. Totally worth the money, and it’s a fundraiser! What could be better? Most things were excellent, I mean no restaurant was serving some bs filler. They were trying to showcase their best stuff. My favorites were HD1’s kenturkey (cause it always is), The Warren’s seared tuna (I must have had 4 of them), san francisco coffee house’s double chocolate cookie+mexican mocha, and family dog’s mint strawberry sangria. yum.

After a full morning of moving all my furniture from one apartment to the new place, and having only 3 hours of sleep, I gotta say I wasn’t exactly in the mood for Taste of the Highlands.
We (somehow!) arrived only about an hour into the festivities and quickly made the rounds. The best food I had was from Pura Vida, but I also go to try lots of other tasty treats including olive oil ice cream from Ecco (which is um… not in the Highlands). I also thought the shrimp & grits from Goin’ Coastal were mighty good! Oh– and the specialty blend iced coffee from San Francisco Coffee hit the spot!
But, quite a few of the vendors ran out quickly. Many places also only offered one option so if I wasn’t interested in what they had, I didn’t get anything. Our vegetarian friend came later on and was extremely disappointed that, by that point, almost everyone was out of food and there was almost nothing that didn’t have meat. She had a croissant from Bakeshop.
Alcohol was flowing, and I got to try a few margaritas, some beer from Terrapin, some vodka drink, wine, etc. I got my buzz on for sure!
Overall I was a little disappointed in the restaurants running out of food. Okay, I wasn’t on time, but really? You should know how many portions to bring and be smart (like Pura Vida) and keep some foods for later on, or keep fresh batches for each half hour instead of giving people fourths in the first 45 minutes. Luckily I didn’t pay for this ticket (my bf covered this one)… but good thing proceeds were going to charity.
Don’t forget your camping chair or blanket to relax on while you listen to local bands!

Taste of the Highlands is a food festival featuring about 30 or so different local restaurants. The money raised benefits Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. The event is about 3 hours long and features a local band.
For $ 35 paid early (over the internet) I thought this was a pretty good deal. It would have been a better deal if I hadn’t partied my ass of the night before and been able to drink AYCD Terrapin, local restaurant-​made margaritas, wine, and liquor. Sad Panda:(I did however eat my weight in small tastes, some of which weren’t all that small. I think this festival is a great way to donate some money to a good cause, hang out on a beautiful day, and eat until you feel the urge to vomit… then eat some more. Best taste’s from 2010’s event would be Murphy’s crab cake sliders (poor chef who had to huddle over the hot flame pan frying these little guys), Jake’s café con leche ice cream, the 4 dishes served by Pura Vida (except for that nasty green «soupy» thing), and South City Kitchen’s chicken thigh over something (can’t quite remember what it was now).