Taste of Chicago 2026 returns to Grant Park | What to know<\/a><\/p>\n“There are some independent restaurants, small intermittent restaurants, small family owned restaurants. They can’t commit to five days. They can’t commit it to one day and then again that’s marketing,” said Sam Toia, president and CEO of the Illinois Restaurant Association.<\/p>\n
Newcomer Cafe Tola is participating in the festival for the first time, serving its empanadas. The business has been operating since 2012 and has four locations.<\/p>\n
“I’m just looking forward to meeting visitors from the come to Chicago just for the Taste of Chicago and get to meet Cafe Tola and get to see my customers,” said Cafe Tola owner and chef Victoria Salamanca.<\/p>\n
There are no Taste tickets; food purchases are made with debit or credit cards, and admission is free. In addition to food, the festival includes dance lessons, karaoke and performances by local bands. Beach Bunny is scheduled to play on the main stage.<\/p>\n
The Taste of Chicago runs through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. in Grant Park. Admission is free.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source abc7chicago.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (WLS) — Big summer festivals in the city, the Taste of Chicago and Windy City Smokeout, are kicking off this week with lots of food and entertainment. ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24\/7. Click here to watch The Taste of Chicago returned to Grant Park, bringing the city’s signature food festival back to its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2494136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[491165],"class_list":["post-2494134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-491165"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/City-summer-festivals-2026-Taste-of-Chicago-Windy-City-Smokeout.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2494134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2494137,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494134\/revisions\/2494137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2494136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2494134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2494134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2494134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}