Q101 PIQNIQ Taste of Randolph

The music is the differentiator

Most Chicago street fests book cover bands. Randolph books actual touring acts across two stages, which means the evening lineup would be a real ticket at a club anywhere else in the city.

Set times are published in advance and the stages are at opposite ends of the closed street, so a five-minute walk covers the whole festival. Plan around the two or three acts you care about and eat between them.

What the West Loop used to be

Randolph Street was the Fulton–Randolph Market District, a wholesale meat and produce corridor with loading docks, cold storage and refrigerated trucks running before dawn. Well into the 1990s it was an industrial street, not a dining destination.

The conversion happened fast — restaurants took the cheap warehouse space, then galleries, then offices, then residential — and the district is now a federally recognized historic district precisely because the industrial architecture survived the transformation.

You can still read it on the buildings during the festival. The terra cotta market signage, the loading bays and the rail-era brickwork are all visible above the tents.

What the festival is

Taste of Randolph closes Randolph Street in the West Loop for a weekend of restaurant tastings, multiple music stages and a bar program, organized as a neighborhood benefit with a suggested donation at the gate.

The music booking is stronger than most food festivals bother with — touring indie, hip-hop and electronic acts rather than cover bands — which is why the crowd stays through the evening instead of leaving after dinner.

Why Randolph Street

Randolph between Halsted and Ogden is Chicago's Restaurant Row, a stretch of former meatpacking and warehouse buildings converted into some of the most-reviewed kitchens in the country over the past fifteen years.

The neighborhood transformation is the backdrop to the festival. This was a wholesale food district that supplied the city's restaurants; now it is the district those restaurants occupy.

How to do the weekend

Come for food early and music late. Afternoon is when the restaurant tents are quickest and the sun is worst; evening is when the stages fill and the street becomes a party.

Portions are tasting-sized and sold individually, so plan to hit five or six vendors rather than two. The restaurants participating are the ones on the block, so a good tasting doubles as a reservation scouting trip.

• Suggested donation at the gate; food and drink purchased separately
• Afternoon for food, evening for the stages
• Check the set times before you arrive — the headliners are worth timing
• The street is pavement in July; hydrate between drinks

Getting to the West Loop

The Green and Pink Lines stop at Morgan, one block from the footprint. The Blue Line at UIC-Halsted and Clinton are short walks, and Metra at Ogilvie and Union Station is about fifteen minutes on foot.

Driving is the worst option — the neighborhood is already parking-constrained on a normal Saturday and the festival closes the main street through it.

Around the block

Fulton Market is a block north with its own dense restaurant and gallery cluster, the Chicago French Market is by Ogilvie, and the Loop and Riverwalk are a fifteen-minute walk east.

If you want to extend the night after the stages shut down, the West Loop's bar density means you will not have to walk far.

Other Chicago street fests

Randolph anchors a summer of neighborhood festivals — Taste of River North, the Silver Room Block Party in Hyde Park, Do Division, Wicker Park Fest and dozens of smaller block parties.

Eventchaser tracks the full Chicago street festival calendar on our food and drink and music pages.