The more street food we have, the more it’s embraced by every income strata, the better world we have—Anthony Bourdain

I love festival food.

Mrs. Big Surf and I took to the streets of Shelbyville, Indiana, our new hometown recently. No not to voice our dismay or celebrate anything but to eat, which is my favorite new pastime.

We partook of the Taste of Shelby County 2022. Incidentally, this is part of Shelby County’s Bicentennial celebration. In 1822 the president of the US was James Monroe and future presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes were born. Matthew Brady, known for his civil war photos, was also born in 1822.

OK, enough history.

Shelbyville is a picturesque small town in southeast Indiana, about thirty minutes SE of Indianapolis. It has a pretty center circle or actually more of an ovate shape. The buildings in the town center have lots of character and flowers abound. Also on the this day the aroma of festival food was rousing my senses.

Now I know that man does not live on festival food alone since we usually can’t get breakfast at festivals. However, festivals usually provide good tasting food in a community setting where people are generally happy to be there. And Taste of Shelby County was no exception.

After perusing the layout of food, the missus and I settled on Dave’s Double Barrel BBQ. It was a very good choice. I had smoked ribs and the blue-eyed darlin’ had pork nachos. We sampled other treats and my apologies to the other vendors but I can’t remember their names. I was too focused on maximizing my food-to-time-to-ticket ratio. I do have pictures though.

The ribs and pork nachos were very good from Dave’s Double Barrel BBQ. He has a food truck, lives in Shelbyville and caters.

I maximized my tasting by buying a half of two different sausage dogs.

Taste of Shelby County is an annual event and I hope you can be there next year, you will see me with a smile on my face hiding a mouthful of something grilled.