We tried to ignore it. Leave the annual coverage, live blogging and comprehensive stunts to the dailies, we thought. But after a few days of co-workers asking for suggestions on what to eat on their lunch, we had to at least go check out the new stands, revisit some old ones and come back to report on our city’s most beloved gorge fest. (Click each image for a close-up view of each dish.)

We started at Soul Vegetarian East, where an order (pictured above) of the Vegetarian BBQ Twist—soft, lumpy, barbecue-sauce drenched seitan—came with a curiously useless stick. Heather Shouse, our eating & drinking editor, thought the sauce was incredibly sweet, and while I liked it, I had trouble eating too much without bread or something to sop up the gloop. A woman came by and asked us whether she should get some, and Heather and I nodded lukewarmly, but whatever look David Tamarkin, senior Eat Out writer, gave her said otherwise, and she went off somewhere else. “She wouldn’t have liked it,” David said.

David expressed concern lest I, the uninsured intern, pass out at the fest, so we got some water. In a brief moment of green guilt, we meekly decided to make up for the bottled water and paper trash we had begun to accumulate by holding onto our forks. Then we decided on the rice and beans with plantain and jerk chicken at Bolat African Cuisine. Not really paying attention to what I was eating, I stuffed a mouthful of chicken bones with bits of dry meat attached to them into my mouth, then hurriedly found a napkin and took care of that. The consensus was that the chicken was incredibly dry, but the jerk sauce and the rice had good kick and the plantain was tasty.

A few minutes later we saw a bunch of guys eating some meat on a stick. Heather asked whether it was any good. “Hell, yeah!” they replied. And so this is how we came to order Sesame Beef on a Stick at The Noodle Vietnamese Cuisine, which was probably the loser of the fest. Two scrawny strips of chewy beef strung together on a stick. David refused to even try it.

But he did suggest we try the sweet potato hash browns from new vendor Hashbrowns. This sounded like a safe bet, but they ended up tasting like grated sweet potato baby food, and I was solidly disappointed. David, too, was confused by the lack of crispiness.

At this point David and I had to drag Heather away from the rocking (okay, insane) rendition of “These Boots are Made For Walkin’” at the Best Buy Stage, and we headed toward the sweet sound of “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.” Apparently, with that change of music, things started to take a turn for the better.

At Taqueria Los Comales we had a steak taco that, although tiny, won points for its fresh tortilla.

We also scored at Costa’s, with a loukaniko (Greek sausage), a thick, juicy sausage with citrus flavor, wrapped in a soft pita with onions. Heather thought the casing was a bit thick, and I complained that I am not a big fan of anything orange-flavored. I was told to get over this.

We thought about getting something at fellow newbie The Breakfast Club, then realized they were serving mass-produced breakfast pizzas and omelet puffs (think Hot Pockets but not nearly as attractive), so we kept walking. We also passed on the measly half-of-a-hot-dog that Vienna Beef was offering as their tasting portion.

At Robinson’s #1 Ribs we had some tasty rib tips, although Heather thought the sauce was too sweet. “A lot of Chicago people like this kind of sauce, I guess,” she conceded. She left David and I in the shade to go grab her annual sure-thing closing act: Eli’s frozen chocolate-dipped toffee cheesecake on a stick. I bit into it, and forgot for a minute how exhausted I was after two hours of eating hot meat in the sun while battling strollers, wheelchairs and apparent crackheads; it was delicious. With that, we returned to the office one stain and at least one waterfall-mullet hairstyle later.

Photos: Martha Williams