Colorado Festival of Horror 2023: Food

Day 1

By the time I got to Colorado Festival of Horror I was super hungry. I had rushed to get to the Denver Mineral, Fossil, and Gem show in the morning and hadn't had time to grab breakfast. When I got to the hotel I found out that I would have till wait till 4pm for their restaurant to open again before I could get some food. They lost out on a lot of money because I saw other people asking about food as well. A hotel that does not have a food option at any time of normal business hours are just asking to lose money and shows mismanagement of the hotel. 

At 4pm I went back and I was one of a very few people in there. Even with that it took 45 minutes for them to make chicken and waffle. It took half an hour for me to get my drink. Yes I know that this was not part of my diet, but sometimes at cons you can't eat healthy and it was also the only food I was going to get that day. When the waitress first set down the plate I asked where was the chicken and she said it was on the waffle. Not only did the color of the chicken nearly blend in with the color of the butter it was about the same size. It looked like they had cooked a half of a chicken breast and called that little of meat chicken. This was one of the most skimpy cutting back of protein I have ever seen a restaurant do. The menu described the item as: achiote and pineapple grilled chicken thighs with a quinoa, pecan, and date cornbread waffle served with whipped mango butter. So first off it lied about chicken thighs since what little meat there was did not even equal on whole thigh even if you had just cut it from the skinniest chicken in the world. Then the 'mango' butter only had a slight after taste of something, but mango it was not. Overall the dis was bland. It was beyond pathetic.   

With my dinner I decided to also try one of their drinks so I could say I gave a couple of their items a try. So I decided to give their watermelon mule a dry. The menu described it as "this summer cocktail has watermelon vodka, lime, and ginger beer. It was so watered down that you didn't get any of the watermelon flavor at all and the ginger beer was only an aftertaste. This place couldn't even make a good drink.

My overall food experience was not worth the price or even the time I wasted trying to get it.

Day 2

So today I didn't want to risk too much on the horrible hotel food, so I stopped of at King Soopers before heading to the con. For breakfast I grabbed one of the new Coke flavors and sushi.

This is one of the new flavors that I really like and is very similar to Dream in flavor. There are hints of Pepsi Blue to this (so a berry flavor). (Just a side note, but the diet version is not as good and actually is kind of gross).

For grocery store sushi I would say this California combo was about average in taste and quality. Three rolls for $10 isn't too bad.

These Parm Crisps was me trying to be good with my snack food at the con and were left over from NDK. These travel well and I could just keep them in my bag or car. This specific kind wasn't that good. All the seeds they put in it overpowered the cheese flavor and there was a weird bitter after taste. I wouldn't get this kind again.

For lunch the hotel had set up a hamburger that based on the restaurant's prices appeared to be more reasonable, but the hamburgers were about the size of sliders. The staff was also having a hard time keeping up with the line. They kept running out of food and had to call for more.

I got their Cheddy Kreuger, but when I asked for them to add some tomatoes and onions to it they refused even though they had it their for the make your own burger and I even told them I was willing to pay more. This burger was just a horrible mess since it didn't have anything to help hold on the guac or queso. So this food experience was another failure due to the hotel's lack of understand of what good food service is. 

For dinner I had grabbed a turkey sandwich from King Soopers in the morning, and it had held up pretty well in the car all day without refrigeration. Yes I know, not the healthiest or safest, but when you have hotels playing their games you do what you have to do. this sandwich actually had way too much bread (I don't normally eat a lot of bread any ways) so I took off the top bun and fed it to the local wildlife. The cheese had melted a little in the heat and that actually helped a little with the dryness since I didn't have and condiments to add to it. 

Day 3

Today I once again decided not to even try the hotel for breakfast and I decided to go to the nearbyish Krispy Kreme since I knew they had their fall options out. Yes, this was a total diet kill and I figured it would be both breakfast and lunch (I know this was actually more like a whole day's worth of calories in one sitting).

Krispy Kreme Pumpkin Spice Frozen Latte. This in a way did taste like a blended up pumpkin pie. It was not just the spice mix flavor, but there was also so actual pumpkin flavor. At the same time the flavor was weak. I think they added in too much of the other blending ingredients and not enough of the flavoring. It was also super think with ice that then watered it down as it melted.

Top Left: Pumpkin Spice Cake Doughnut- Dry and dense. There was the spice flavor, but no pumpkin flavor. 

To Right: Pumpkin Spice Maple Pecan Doughnut- Dry and dense, but not as much as the cake doughnut. This one there was a sweet nut flavor that overpowered the pumpkin spice and the sweet was just sweet with no essence of maple.

Bottom Left: Pumpkin Spice Original Glazed Doughnut- Slightly dry and dense, but not as much as the cake doughnut. This was just weird to me. I'm used to their original glazed being super light and fluffy, but I have no idea what they did to this doughnut to kill it. You would think if they were just adding spice to their normal batter that the consistency would be about normal, but this was way different and not in a good way.

Bottom Right: Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake Swirl Doughnut- Dry and dense, but not as much as the cake doughnut. Adding the cheesecake swirl really didn't do anything for the doughnut besides to help cut some of the dryness.

All of these doughnuts did not match the quality of Krispy Kreme doughnuts that I am used to. I don't know if the ones I got were a few days old, but they did not seem fresh at all and this added to their dryness and density. It's sad because I normally compare all other doughnuts to Krispy Kreme and this time I was entirely let down.

After breakfast I did not eat again until after I left the con in the late afternoon when I grabbed lunch with Mommy Geek. Overall, my food experience this con was average to bad, but this happens a lot with con food.

Top Picture From: https://www.denver.org/event/colorado-festival-of-horror%3A-slasher-hotel/106267/