I wrote last Friday about how excited I was to go to the Pickle Festival on the Lower East Side.

On Sunday morning, I purposely didn’t eat any breakfast, hoping to keep my stomach empty enough to amply fill it with pickles.  When I got down to Orchard St., however, I was somewhat disappointed.

For one, the festival was pretty small.  I really don’t get why.  There are so many pickle companies out there and the festival organizers could have done a better job at getting some of them out.  After all, the festival did claim to be international (As a Canadian, I would have loved to have had a Strub pickle).

The problem with the festival was that there were very few booths and only one company giving out free pickles.  Another was selling pickles on a stick for $1, but for the most part, the booths were only giving out incredibly small pieces of pickle on a toothpick.  Apart from that, the booths were only selling their pre-packaged products.

Overall, the festival lacked substance and felt more like a very small farmer’s market than a pickle festival.  The fact is that there is so much potential for this day to be awesome.  Sunday, though, was just plain mediocre.