It was tilapia with mango salsa from Bonefish Grill, tortilla chips with spinach dip from The Marlton Tavern, frozen yogurt from Susie Q’s and much more when thousands filled Main Street on May 18 for the Taste of Evesham.
The Evesham Celebrations Foundation, the non-profit organization that uses donations and sponsorships to fund community events such as the Independence Day celebration and Harvest Fest, once again hosted the annual event.
Now in its sixth year, the Taste saw more than a dozen exhibits featuring local cuisine, beer and wine tasting, cooking demonstrations and other live entertainment.
One Evesham resident at the event sampling the delicacies was Mayor Randy Brown. Having established the Evesham Celebrations Foundation, Brown said he couldn’t be prouder of the members and volunteers for all the hard work they put into making events possible.
“This is our sixth year doing this,” Brown said. “It gets better every year because the community turns out and has a chance to visit with neighbors, see people they haven’t see for years, and like I’ve preached from day one since 2007, if you create community events, people will come to them, and they continue to show it today.”
Deputy Mayor Ken D’Andrea, also a member of the celebrations foundation, echoed Brown’s sentiments. He said the idea to do a taste event came from wanting to replicate similar events, but with a distinctive Evesham twist.
“We do it with our twist and our added flair, and when we do our events, we do them right,” D’Andrea said. “We do them with a high degree of professionalism, high degree of volunteerism, and we usually do a pretty good job. You see the thousands of people come in on a regular basis for this event and it’s all good.”
Attending the event for a second year was resident James Moyer and his wife Meredith. He said it was good to support local businesses and wished more towns would do it.
“It’s good, a lot of good restaurants,” Moyer said. “It’s a nice day after the long winter to get out and enjoy the good weather and the good food.”
Moyer’s pick of the day was Sal’s Pizzaworks.
“We’ll go with Sal’s Pizza,” Moyer said. “I enjoyed Sal’s Pizza. They just make a good pizza, that’s all.”
Anthony Rotondi, manager and owner of Sal’s Pizzaworks, said for what they were doing, they were having a hard time keeping up, so it seemed liked they were doing very well at the event.
“It’s very busy,” Rotondi said. “Big turnout. It gets our food out there. I think a lot of people from out of Marlton come, so it’s nice to get past our regular customers. Although we love our regular customers, too, don’t get me wrong on that. It’s good exposure I believe.”
One attendee from outside Marlton was John Krewer. Krewer grew up in South Jersey but now works as a police officer in Philadelphia, and only found out about the festival as he was driving through town.
“I didn’t even know about it,” Krewer said. “I actually drove by and saw it and stopped. It’s actually a really fun time. It seems very community oriented. It benefits the businesses in the community. It’s very community friendly.”
One business benefited by the event was Ciconte’s Italia Pizzeria. General manager Frank Simon said he thought the event had a good turnout, and it was a great way to get exposure and to get people to try Ciconte’s food.
“It’s definitely important for the business,” Simon said. “We just want to let people in Marlton know we got good stuff and we really take pride in our food and our preparation…we want to give them a good product. That’s why we’re here today.”
