Kristin Eberts / Photo Editor / ke277604@ohiou.edu

Ohio freshmen Lucy Fromyer (left) and Colleen Koehler (right) look at items from local vendors available for purchase during the Taste of Athens event held on south green Saturday.

Taste of Athens — more like taste of three restaurants and a few boutiques. This Saturday, University Program Council hosted its second annual Taste of Athens, an event designed to give people a chance to discover the food and fare that Athens has to offer, and it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Maybe moving locations from the Howard Hall site to South Green was not the best option for UPC. UPC’s goal was to draw in more freshmen by moving the event to South Green, but the turnout was low.

Taste of Athens was a bit of a bust this year. Maybe it was the off-and-on sunshine, maybe the location change; but either way, the event was less than packed.

Only three restaurants participated in the tasting event, compared to last year’s 15, along with three Uptown boutiques. The shops saw little traffic as those who attended swayed toward the free lemonade and $1 pizza slices from Abrio’s Brick Oven, 270 E. State St.

Souvlaki’s Mediterranean Garden, 9 W. State St., made shish kebobs, Middle Eastern rice and baklava — which was almost as good as my best friend’s mom’s. The $2.50 platters brought big portions and plenty of meat.

Casa Nueva, 4 W. State St., had biscuits with jam, brownies and chips and salsa for $2 a portion. They also had T-shirts and tote bags with the Casa Nueva logo for sale.

The new addition to the event, Uptown boutiques, had a lot to offer, but the food vendors were visited more often. The Other Place, 43 S. Court St.; Mountain Laurel Gifts, 25 S. Court St.; and Themes, 61 N. Court St., sold accessories and jewelry under separate tents.

But why the low turnout? Maybe because upperclassmen aren’t willing to travel down as far as South Beach to pay for food that they could get faster by walking Uptown. Maybe most freshmen on Saturday afternoons are still sleeping, hung over or even studying. Maybe because the “real men” of Athens were watching the NFL Draft, and their girlfriends sat beside them in replica jerseys.

What I do know is that good food did happen to be on South

Green lawn on Saturday, but not too many people came to gobble it up. I wonder what happened to the leftovers.