Thank God, Alhamdulillah, for a big Muslim event on the East end. With the exceptions of the Masjid Fun Fairs/Community events and random Eid bazaars, we hardly ever see larger scale Muslim events on the East side, which is a crying shame since there are so many cool Muslims who want to do fun things with halal food options without having to trek across town to do it.
We arrived at about 1pm and despite the fact that they technically opened their doors at noon, most of the vendors were not entirely set up, some it seemed hadn’t even arrived. This is my gripe with Muslim events, they run on some other country’s time zone or they think start times are negotiable. I figure if I go early, there won’t be crowds, we can have a good lunch and we can leave at a Kid appropriate hour.
Since she’s a preschooler now, the Kid actually enjoys being out with us more and we are less terrified of her running into traffic, getting lost or throwing epic tantrums. Thankfully, this event was at the Markham Fair Grounds and they had full on Carnival rides. In fact, they were the exact same ones we saw a week prior at the Taste of Lawrence Festival. the Kid went on her first ferris wheel ride and clung for dear life to her dad as the man operating the ride made it go suuuuuuper fast. We all held our breath on the ground hoping she wouldn’t start screaming. Mercifully, it only went around three times at high speed before she came off and swore off rides for the rest of the day. She was happy enough the follow the juggler around and eat ice cream for the rest of our time there. All in all, it was kid friendly and even a week later, we still hear about the Ferris Wheel.
There were about a dozen food options, including the standard Sufra and Zabiha Halal trucks that gave out free samples. My mother of course took three of each sample so that everyone could try some. Personally, at these events I would prefer to try things I don’t normally get a chance to try or haven’t seen before. This made me HAVE to try Kenyan Kebab. I figured it would be different from the south asian, persian, afghan etc kebabs.
Now it was starting to rain while I was outside waiting for my order, so I didn’t get much of a chance to chat these guys up while they barbecued my kebab on the spot. consequently, I didn’t find out if/where they have a restaurant. We got some sort of combo that came with 2 kebabs, some fried potatoes (bajias? bajiyas? bhajias?) and a type of salsa that went really well with everything. Was this kebab massively different from every other kebab I’ve ever had… well no. Having said that, I would absolutely eat it again. It was the type of kebab-y barbecue summer comfort food that was tasty and satisfying. The salsa/chutney sauce stuff was almost a pico de gallo with a bit of a spiced-up punch but it worked so well on the potatos.
Sadly, other than the Northern Smokes brisket sandwich and the free samples I had given to me, I didn’t get to try the other offerings because of the rain and that all the food vendors were outside.
Honorable mention (again) was the Spice of Life guy. A friendly local Markham guy who makes amazing spice rubs (which I have previously purchased from Adam’s Natural Foods) and husband-approved hot sauces and BBQ sauce. We carried home a bag full of heavy hot sauce, bottles as gifts for my husband’s hot sauce connoisseur friends.
We left happy, with full stomachs and only had a 10 minute, non-highway drive to my mom’s house for tea and kiddie pool splashing. Not having to commute isn’t the best part of the day, but it definitely adds points to this event in my book.
Foodie Muslim 