This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Ethnic Fest

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Mike attended the annual Ethnic Enrichment Festival in Kansas City - on a day that proves Ichiro Suzuki's favorite English expression is indeed true.  He describes his experience there, including a run-in with a Friend of the Podcast.

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Just right. the podcast. It's in the Lola Lung Orthodox today. I'm actually recording this while driving. The day I'm recording this, it was a pretty hot out August 17.

So two quotes come to mind for today. One was Ichor Suzuki when he was asked to his favorite English expression. His response was August in Kansas City is hotter than two

rats in a fucking little sock August in Kansas City and it was in fact that hot today and of course with the whole climate change thing being a reality that classic South Park quotes comes to mind

it's fucking hot thanks to Randy Mars I'm a bitch but today I want to get on and talk about my experience for the first time ever going to the annual

ethnic enrichment festival. So this is an annual event they hold at Swo Park, of all places. For those outside of the Kansas City area, Swel Park is a huge urban park in the eastern part of Kansas City. It's pretty much the, you could think of it as a bridge between the ghetto and the suburbs on the east side. It is that big. But it is specifically in the main parts of the park,

if you want to call that near the zoo entrance and the starlight. They had a plenty of tents and everything's in it, and we had a park on grass. are not good for starting the thing and like I said it was fucking hot today but uh went in they had a play of international booths

from all different countries circling the thing and the pavilion they had some performances going on I believe they had Chinese dragons and taiko drums going on while I was there and I wasn't there long

at all. It was that effing hot. I did hit up a few of the booths. So the first one I hit was the Palestine booths. They were selling Palestinian food. I walked away with a pita bread and a Palestinian soda, which I have not drunk and probably won't, given how much sugar is actually in the thing.

but who was running the booth and taking my order? It was friend of the podcast, Samantha Salem. You recall, yeah, once you've been on the podcast, once you are a friend of the podcast. That's how it works. Samantha, your call we had on during our fringe program last year. And we're chatting a little bit. about how yeah I was lucky I didn't go to jail for what I said

and she echoed that sentiments and yeah I'm lucky we didn't go to jail over that so so that was pretty cool and it was good beer bread and everything again I have not touched the soda

just because I'm fairly high in the sugar contents and oh yeah you got to be drinking water in this heat so I didn't even touch it however there was a young man in and out free samples of a mango

a mango lemonade standing in line and it was really good very sweet but you know very still very good so that was kind of cool um

uh by the way $5 to get in and then you bearer have cash on you at each of these individual booths. I take the foods and stuff. It was mostly foods coming out of these things. So now right next to Palestine booth was a booth for the local Czech and Slovak Club. So I recall my episode on the Sugar Creek. Slavic Fest, they were kind of promoting that too, because I mean, Czechs and Slovak's are Slavic peoples. For those who born after 1990, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were at one point

a combined country called Czechoslovakia, which has brought to mind a pretty painful memory from school specifically eighth grade one of the guys in the locker next to mine who would always call me Czechoslovakia

simply because the first three letters of Czechoslovakia are C-C-C-E same as my name even though I am myself not Czech I am of course Polish

but talking to folks at that booth not only were they talking about the Sugar Creek Slavic Fest and I'm on more power to them and I hope to come back next year had to miss this year for reasons I hope are obvious by now

but yeah I blast I told him yeah you know I'm Polish right and I'm a little just point that the Polish don't have their own separate booth but it sounded like it wasn't just the Czechs in the Slovak's using that booth but the Polish community was in that booth and the Ukrainian folks were using that booth too

so that's awesome a pan-slav thing going on specifically Pan-Western Slav but we'll bring in Ukraine as well so I thought that was pretty cool It's on there. Where's that As well, I just

buy a bottle of water from them as I was talking with them. And that, again, a good thing for today. Drink water in this fucking heat. Yeah. So after that's

went all the way across the thing to the Japan booth. I didn't need to show off my Japanese skills, but I did. Oh, hao'a-go-saymas. Thank you. For those you don't speak Japanese,

oh, ha'o-a-a-a-z-a-z-a-mas. Good morning. Good day. Actually, good morning. During the day, you'd say, good-nizua. Right. And, thank you-a-goh-hazazazan. is a thank you.

They had a few dishes available. I ordered the chicken curry. And oh, man, it was pretty good. The curry and the chicken and the rice all together. Delicious. Poici, if I may use the Japanese word. In case you have figured out by now, I love Japanese food as a direct consequence of studying the damn language. So, yeah.

So did that set in the pavilion while the Chinese dragons were going on trying to stay cool. Trying my best to stay cool in the shade. Everything. and couldn't really eat the whole thing, unfortunately. It was still pretty good stuff, you know. And I had to make one more stop before I did leave another booth. This one, another Slavic group, the Serbian booth. So, of course, Serbia, you know, the U.S.avia and Bulgaria,

Those are the southern Slavs. Right? So cool. They have their own booth. They sold their, where's they had the Pofitiz and Baklava. So, again, just ordered a water. And I thought it was a good idea to stop by the Serbian booth

because about a week and a half ago, as it was recorded, and we had a player for supporting Casey stopped by the chess club. His name is Dan Yovalljic. I apologize if I'm butchering that, but he's Serbian and plays is a very highly rated chess player too, in addition to being a professional soccer player,

professional footballer to my international audience. And a really cool dude. So I thought I owed it to myself to just check out what the Serbians were doing. And they had other countries there to, I will have to do a second part to this. So I will wait until I get home because I am driving right now. And I can't really pull out the program to look at it. And it's just not safe to do so. So I will pause and we will be right back with that list.

Oh hey, we're back. So I am home and I can safely read off the list of co-trees that had a representation there. I said I didn't stop by all the booths. But here we go. So we had Mexico. Well, if it's Mexican food, well, Mexican food. well, Mexican food is pretty much ubiquitous around here. You know, got plenty of good Mexican spots.

All right. We got Ethiopia. We got Laos. By the way, I've heard interested things about Ethiopian food. So thank you, Simpsons. We have Scotland, Samoa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Puerto Rico. Should already be a state. Let's make that happen, folks. Sudan, Senegal, Serbia, or harder mentioned.

Turkey, I came pretty close to stop by the Turkish booth, but didn't. And no, that's okay. Been hot. Israel, Ecuador, Greece. I've recently learned my niece likes. Greek food. Not really my thing, but no, to each is her own.

I'm sorry, I'm turned off by all the yogurts and stuff they put in their food. All right, so we have Trinidad and Tobago, we have India, the Philippines, Japan, I already mentioned. Bangladesh.

We have a lot of listeners in Bangladesh, so getting them a shy. Haiti. Nepal, South Korea Oh, looks like there was a UN booth there too Jamaica

Kenya Where can you see an irons Only in Kenya We have Vietnam Thailand Thailand Egypt There was a Native American

booth it looks like The Gambia Cameroon Pakistan There's Taiwan as well So one bar chain

Yeah That's a debate For another time The legal status of Taiwan and Hong Kong There was a Hong Kong booth There

So We have a So Italy Eritrea, Colombia, Chamini, mainland China. Norway, Indonesia, Sweden, Hawaii, that's an interesting one because that's a state. So, yeah, Puerto Rico has a, yeah, let's make Puerto Rico stay already, and Hawaii's already a state. Palestine, of course, mentioned, Ukraine, Czech, Slovak. France. I don't say anything French there, but oh well.

So, yeah, that's pretty cool. And the program also has the menus that were available. So I'll just stick with the countries that I did stop by. So we'll start with the chicken Slovak. It had collages, apple, cinnamon, apricot, poppy seed, and water. I stopped and got some water was there while I was talking those folks so remember drink water when you're in such a hot environment yeah let me see yeah since I mentioned Greece and how my niece likes Greek food now they were serving the Euro sandwiches Spanacopita Baklava, Baklava

Sunday, soda and water. And also sticking on the subject to my niece, she was recently in Italy as well, so they have, for Italy, they had a half pound Italian

sausage sandwich with peppers and onions. Sounds good. A quarter pound sausage with peppers and onions. quarter pound jumbo beef hot dogs honestly that doesn't sound very Italian to me the hot dogs

but Italian wedding cookies fresh squeeze lemonade lime made cherry mango strawberry blue raspberry blue raspberry and bottle of water

hmm sounds good the Japanese booth they're serving terriaki chicken the chicken kata with rice

a vegan option Inari sushi I believe that's tofu mouchi desserts rice cakes green tea or ocha

and water of course or Mizu yeah the mexican tent where these are beef tacos burritos which are being with pork or bean in cheese nachos enchiladas onion and cheese or cheese canned soda in a ball and water again you could go to any decent Mexican place and get that but still pretty cool that they hit that as an option.

So, other Palestinian tents I talked about. So once again, shout to Samantha. Musa Khan rolls with chicken, onion, and sumacupac wrap. And other stuff that I did not find appetizing, so I did not do that. Now we have a hummus platter, which contained hummus, pita bread, pickled turnus. olives and we also had a baba ganouche which is a rusted egg plants dip zatar olive oil pickled turnips olives and bread I'm not fan of olives I'm sorry that did not reveal to me not that is hummus nothing I only had hummus

once while I was walking while the car was out of service. There's a Mediterranean place in downtown Northern Park and stuff where I ordered

a Shwarma, which I do like Shwarma, but they insisted that I gave a taste of their hummus, and I didn't particularly like it to me. It tastes like a bad peanut butter. Yeah, when not, I think.

Back to the menu. They also had warm melon slices and lemonade and Palestinian sodas, which I did buy one, but haven't even opened it yet. And then, well, so yeah, the Serbian, they had Musaka. I'm not even going to try to pronounce this, I'll just spell it. P-L-J-E-S-K-A-V-I-C-A. Now I'm going to try to pronounce it. K-V-E-V-P's potato salad.

Povac-C-Sitza, which I do talk about Povat-Citza. That's their, basically, bread cake, bread thing. Baklava cookies, lemonade and water. I'm going to look up Thailand I've got to go over Thailand so they had patai sir-fright noodles with the in a sauce

pat-tai is pretty good try it at least once in your life they had grilled pork Thai style grow pork they had sticky rice young coconut Thai sausage Nam Kang Sai shaved ice desserts served with

fruit toppings Thai coffee or Thai tea and because I like Vietnamese food specifically for but did not stop with the Vietnamese

tense they were serving beef kebabs, chicken kebabs fried rice I where you're MSG spring rolls egg rolls crab Rangoon,

Nata Fan Boba tea soda and water and yeah this is an annual event hopefully they choose a cooler month

from now on because right now it's just too fucking hot to do this just my opinion but still had a enjoyable time while I was there and yeah I look forward to trying to do it again next year

and I think that's going to do it for this edition we will talk the end soon this podcast is uncalled for is hosted produced and edited by myself Mike Chernevsky our opening music is this podcast is uncalled for theme which is created at sueno.com suno.com sun and o dot com

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