FEATURED FOOD
Hippo de Mayo Returns to Downtown Manchester
Written By Angie Sykeny (asykeny@hippopress.com)
Images: Courtesy Photo
Thousands of taco-lovers will head to downtown Manchester on Thursday, May 4, for the world’s largest taco tour, the Hippo de Mayo Taco Challenge, featuring nearly 50 downtown restaurants selling unique $2 tacos they’ve created just for the event.
“We were looking for an event that would bring people out into downtown and into the streets,” said Hippo Publisher Jody Reese, who created the taco tour with his staff in 2009.
“The time of year fit to do something with tacos. We looked around, and there was really nowhere else where they were doing organized taco tours, so we thought it would be a fun idea.”
During the five-hour event, people can walk to participating restaurants, trying tacos and voting on their favorites to win the People’s Choice Award. Restaurants will also be vying for a Judges’ Choice award, and both winners will receive $1,000 to benefit the charities of their choice.
These year’s participants include cafes and delis, pubs and diners, farm-to-table and vegan eateries, candy and ice cream shops, steakhouses and seafood restaurants and a variety of ethnic restaurants including Greek, Italian, Mexican, Brazilian, Indian, Hungarian, Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese.
“If you think about it, a taco is just a piece of bread with stuff in it,” Reese said. “That’s the nice part about it. It’s very versatile. Every culture has a taco.”
Taco tourists can look forward to several first-time participating restaurants this year, including recently opened restaurants like vegan juicery and cafe Milk & Honey and apothecary-inspired eatery Restoration Cafe, as well as some well-established restaurants like Piccola Italia Ristorante, which is in its 16th year of business.
“Every year, I thought, ‘But we don’t sell tacos here.’ ... I didn’t see the fun part about it,” said John Paolini, owner of Piccola.
His chef, Heather Pelletier, who joined the Piccola team last September, prompted his change of heart.
“I’ve gone to Taco Tour before, and I always thought of it as a fun kind of chaos,” Pelletier said, “so it was exciting to hear that [Paolini] hadn’t done it before. I thought it’d be nice for our clientele to see us do something new.”
“So this year I said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s have some fun,’” Paolini said.
Piccola will feature a chicken Parmesan taco — a breaded fried chicken cutlet with sauce and shredded cheese inside a hard taco shell, and a Caesar salad mix sprinkled on top. The idea was inspired by one of Piccola’s kitchen workers who often makes himself a chicken Parmesan sub with a bit of Caesar on top. Pelletier said it’s the perfect taco to represent the restaurant.
“We sell a lot of chicken Parm. It’s a staple in the Italian world.” she said. “When you go out [for Italian food], that’s one of the things you think of.”
Those who didn’t try the Judges’ Choice winning taco last year will have a chance to this year as Mediterranean restaurant Campo Enoteca brings back its eggplant polpetti taco, made with eggplant, artichoke white bean purée and pico de gallo pepper relish.
Peter Macone, operational manager for Campo Enoteca and farm-to-table restaurant Republic, also a taco tour participant, said the tacos allow the restaurants to highlight the styles of cuisine featured on their menus; for Campo, the eggplant is a common special and the relish is used as a garnish on its artichoke small bites. Republic’s falafel taco is inspired by the restaurant’s vegan-friendly menu, which includes a falafel plate, and has a homemade tahini dressing and red cabbage slaw that can be found with Republic’s chickpea ragu dish.
“We may not have tacos on the menu regularly, but everything in our [Taco Challenge] taco is a piece of one of our dishes and can be found somewhere on the menu,” Macone said. “We take different flavors from our menu and say, ‘These will go great together.’”
With so many tacos being featured that day, it can be hard for restaurants to make their taco stand out.
“For me, the flavors need to blend, and it’s got to have a little crunch to it,” Reese said of what makes a memorable taco for him. “[Restaurants] should mix different textures and get a little freshness in there with whatever that may be.”
To make the most of your taco tour experience, Reese said, do some research beforehand and go in with a plan; map out eight to 10 places with tacos you want to try and tackle those places. Also, don’t be afraid to branch out into the outskirts of the taco tour map or you could be missing out on some fabulous tacos.
“People tend to congregate in the Lowell Street-Elm Street area, which is great, but I strongly suggest hitting the outer areas first,” Reese said. “Once you hit those, it’s easy to come in and hit Elm Street, but you’re getting some geographic diversity in there.”
For more information visit: www.hippodemayo.com/