Cheese Curd Festival: Ellsworth, Wisconsin
What’s more “Wisconsin” than beer, brats and cheese curds? An entire festival filled with beer, brats and cheese curds! Ellsworth, Wisconsin is known as the Cheese Curd Capital of Wisconsin and is home to the Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery. The creamery creates all of the tasty white morsels served at the festival and has earned world-wide recognition for their product. Every June, the city celebrates its culinary acclaim with a festival in honor of this Midwest snack.
If you aren’t from the Midwest, there’s a good chance you haven’t even heard of a cheese curd let alone tried one. They are fresh pieces of curdled milk, which sounds disgusting but is absolutely delicious! The best cheese curds are so fresh they literally squeak as you bite into them. You will rarely come across a Midwestern restaurant that doesn’t have deep-fried cheese curds as part of their appetizer menu.
Located in East End Park, the Cheese Curd Festival features Cheese Curd Central under the Main Tent, a Food Truck Alley, a marketplace with locally made arts and crafts, live music and several guided food and beverage tasting experiences. Cheese Curd Central offers three varieties of curds to choose from: the classic hand-dipped deep-fried cheese curd, the sweet dessert-style cinnamon sugar deep-fried cheese curd and a third option that is new each summer. This year they rolled out a hickory bacon deep-fried cheese curd option that sold out by Saturday afternoon!
If you’ve never been to Wisconsin, this festival is a great way to experience the local flavor. Kick off your weekend with the Corks & Kegs Tasting where you can sample Wisconsin’s best beers, ciders and wines in a Wisco-style happy hour! Elliott’s Up North Cheese Curd Brat Party is your chance to experience a brat like no other, topped to your taste buds’ delight. These sample-sized brats are stuffed with cheese curds (yes, you heard that right…there are cheese curds IN the brats) and served alongside a smorgasbord of condiments a mile long. Whether you like to experiment with mixing flavors or prefer to keep it simple with a single dollop of mustard, it’s yours for the tasting.
The Craft & Curd: Paired experience was a new event this year and let you make your opinion count! Five regional breweries went head to head for votes as they paired their favorite craft beer with an exclusive, custom cheese curd flavor. As a lover of both craft beer and all things cheese, you know I planned my day around this! Guests got small samples of each craft and curd pairing, then voted by texting in their favorite combination. And although my favorite pairing didn’t win, my favorite beer did! Barley John’s Mango Double Pale Ale just tastes like summer in Wisconsin: smooth and refreshing.
If somehow you’re still hungry, you can also satisfy your sweet tooth before leaving! What better place to celebrate National Dairy Month than the Dairy State itself? The Ice Cream Tasting is the perfect remedy for a hot summer day! For those with adventurous palates, there’s even a cheese curd ice cream – this IS a cheese curd festival, after all! If milk and cookies are more your style, be sure to cast your vote for your favorite combo at the Milk and Cookie Pairing. Four different flavors of milk are specially matched up with freshly baked cookies to allow the entire family in on the day’s fun.
Whether you want to try it all or are eyeing up a particular tasting experience, I highly recommend planning your day in advance. Tickets can be purchased online for nearly all tastings and off-peak times are a great way to beat the long (but totally worthwhile) lines. This year’s festival welcomed almost 30,000 people over two days, nearly six times last years attendance of 5,000! Hey, who doesn’t love cheese curds?! The planning committee is already hard at work on next year’s event so check out the site here and mark your calendars for next June!
What specialty foods are your hometown or state known for?
