What To Eat At Lollapalooza

By Anthony Todd in Food on Aug 2, 2012 7:20PM

Gone are the days of bad food at Lolla. Since Graham Elliot first took over the food lineup in 2009, the Chow Town portion of the festival has been getting better and better. Even more impressive, there are vendors serving real food—not just the standard fried outdoor festival junk. What's great to eat this year? Some of Chicago's best experts have already weighed in, and now here's our two cents.

First off, it's important to know exactly where to go for the food. The festival is too big and too crowded to be messing around for hours trying to figure out where the Seedlings Farms booth is. Thank goodness Grubstreet Chicago has come to the rescue with this downloadable map of the entire Chow Town lineup.

Our occasional contributor Ryan Glasspiegel picked out his five favorite things to eat at Lolla.

The “Wisconsin” burger at Edzo’s
The Evanston-based burger shop, which is soon expanding into Lincoln Park, will still be grinding its beef and cutting its fries the day they are served. Made of humanely raised beef from Flagel Farm, the Wisconsin burger comes topped with Merkt’s cheddar, ketchupeño, grilled onions, bacon, and pickled banana peppers.

The Lobster corn dog at Grahamwich
Do we really need to explain why we want to munch on lobster corn dogs? It's buttery, it's on a stick and it's made of lobster. That's enough for us.

Grilled Cheese Stuffed Pretzel from Goose Island Brew Pub
With the pretzel sourced locally from Kim and Scott’s pretzels, you gotta wonder how you could have gone through your whole life thus far without trying one of these.

Fish Tacos from Timothy O’Toole’s
These fish tacos come beer battered and topped with Baja Slaw and Chipotle Aioli. Yum!

Pulled Pork Sandwich from Smoke Daddy
Yeah, it seems like you’ve seen them at every street festival this summer and, yeah, you’ve probably already eaten this delicious sandwich. It was amazing, though, right? Well-executed pulled pork like this is ALWAYS a guaranteed one-way ticket to satisfaction town.

Chuck's pick for lolla? La Colombe Pure Black coffee, perfect for partying into the night. It's cold-pressed, steeped for 16 hours, filtered and served undiluted. Anthony's choice? A Seedlings Farm fresh fruit smoothie. Stay hydrated, keep your blood sugar up, and be healthy so you can last through the whole festival.

Need even more suggestions? Sarah Freeman at Zagat has done a top 10 list for Lolla, and it barely overlaps with ours. There's so much good food even the foodies don't have a single answer.