Ethnic Food Fair at the International Cottages - Balboa Park, San Diego

The Ethnic Food Fair at the International Cottages in Balboa Park is always held on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. It's one of our favorites, and we try to attend each year. This event seems to get bigger every year too, and this year it seemed like everyone and their dog was there.

We did a quick walk around the whole place first, in order to check out what was being offered by each of the countries. After we had checked all of them out, we decided to try the House of Ireland first, the Banger and Champ was excellent. 

The potatoes were served with slices of Irish sausage and carmelized onions. (At this point I should mention that the food photos you're about to see are nowhere near as good as the food itself. There was no place to put anything down or to be able to control the lighting.)

From Ireland we headed over to Argentina, which consistently had the longest lines of the day. Both the Choripan (sausage) and the Spinach Empanadas were excellent. The Chimichurri Sauce on the sausage was great, as was the roll (it had never seen the inside of plastic bag, so it had a nice crust). The only picture I have of the sausage sandwich itself is really bad, so we'll go with Chef Frank cooking them instead.

Next stop was China, where we tried the Dumplings (potstickers) and Green Onion Pancake.

At that point we were thinking it was probably time to take a break, and our plan was to wander down to the Art Museum to check out the new Greek Heroes exhibit. We got as far as the House of England when Heather spotted the Chicken Pies. We started talking with ladies running the booth, and one of them insisted on going to get us some fresh out of the oven pies. She came back a few minutes later, but I could not get her to look up for the picture.

So now we were finally ready to head for the Art Museum for a little break. No photos allowed in the special exhibits, but I did get this one of the fountain in entrance area.

When we stepped back outside this girl asked if I would take a picture of her and a friend with her camera. It was the coolest Polaroid I've seen in a while, and I had to get a shot of the camera.

Time for some desert, back at the Food Fair. First stop was the House of Finland for a Crepe with strawberries and whipped cream, and a glass of cold Blueberry Soup (no picture).

Our last stop of the day, staying with the northern European theme, was the House of Norway, where we had Vaffler, a waffle with jam and sour cream.

We had a nice little talk with the ladies serving the waffles. Like everyone else at the Fair, they seemed to be having a great time.

Click here to see more images from the Ethnic Food Fair at the International Cottages in Balboa Park this afternoon.