I saw The Big Dill Pickle Festival on Tik Tok, and thought it looked like so much fun. I’m a big pickle girl (I’m that friend who will always take your extra pickles), so a whole festival dedicated to pickles?! Sign me up! When I found out it was my birthday weekend, I knew it was truly meant to be. I mentioned it to one of my best friends, Hannah, and she said she’d definitely join. So we bought the tickets, and headed out to Baltimore, Maryland over the weekend.

What is The Big Dill Pickle Festival, you might ask? We were asking the same thing before we arrived, and weren’t really sure what to expect either. We bought regular tickets for Saturday, and VIP tickets for Sunday. The festival included live music, DJs, lots of pickle samples, people selling homemade pickles and pickle foods & drinks, and a few photo opps.

Let’s start with the homemade pickles. There were SO. MANY. PICKLES. I didn’t realize there were so many things you could do to create a variety of pickle flavors. There were taco pickles, lemon pickles, spicy pickles, sweet pickles… and even pumpkin spice pickles! We tried as many as we could find, and it was really interesting. We both took home some pickles (it’s an easy guess as to which flavor I took home). I couldn’t fly with mine, so they will be coming to me in December when Hannah comes home for Christmas.

The pickle foods and drinks were what I was most excited to try. They had vendors with pickle egg rolls, pickle corn dogs, pickle pizza, pickle beer, pickle margaritas, and more. I tried quite a few menu items, including the pizza, eggrolls, and beer. Hannah tried a different pizza. Some of the foods were really good, others were just OK, and some were not good at all. But it was a really interesting experience!

The pickle beer and buffalo chicken pickle pizza were my favorite menu items. The eggrolls were honestly disappointing. I wish they’d had some smaller sizes for some of the foods and drinks. The eggrolls were huge, the slushies were full size, and it was hard to try multiple things with such large portions. Hannah and I split quite a few items to try to taste as many things as possible (and save a little bit of money). The prices were pretty reasonable, which is great, but it was hard to finish all the samples. We also grabbed a funnel cake (NOT PICKLE RELATED) to hold us until we could wait through one of the pickle lines.

Sunday, we had the VIP tickets. These included early access to The Big Dill Pickle Festival, brunch (including a bagel bar with pickle cream cheese), free Bloody Marys and Mimosas, access to the upper level of the event, a VIP photobooth, and some free gear. I’m glad we got these for one of the days – the hat and sunglasses were so cute, and having a free brunch (and free drinks to start off the morning) was nice. We also had a chance to go back to some of the vendors we’d missed Saturday without having to stand in long lines before regular ticket holders could enter.

Overall, I really enjoyed the event. I had so much fun trying pickle themed foods that I probably wouldn’t have had much of an opportunity to try. I loved the beer and hope I can find something similar around here (I’ve had some pickle beer in Georgia, and I know a couple of local breweries produce some; I just need to get my hands on some). One thing we didn’t try was the pickle ice cream. I regret it a little, because it sounds interesting, but I think I’m ok without that experience. They had some pickle dog treats for sale, so I picked up some for Remus (if you haven’t seen my adorable pup, check out my Pets page on the blog!).