Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival

This was our first time going to the Tomato Festival amd we were pleasantly surprised by everything it had to offer. Lots of local vendors, a little kids play area, carnival rides & games and of course fair food! We are looking forward to mext year

I haven't attended this festival yet and am very interested to attend it soon. I see a lot of complaints about the festival on here and it disappoints me. We are a community and if something is not to your liking then do something about it. Reach out to the leaders and see if you can lend a helping hand. It's that simple. Thanks to all who have contributed in advising the rest of the world that there is work to be done. #Howcanyouhelp.

If you've never tried tomato fudge- you're in luck! The (alleged) birthplace of the commercial tomato was in Reynoldsburg, OH., a suburb of Columbus. Each September, you can have your fill of just about anything Tomato. I'm hearing the voice of Bubba Gump chanting "Tomato soup, fried tomatoes, tomato on a stick, tomato ice cream" ... The Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival is a big deal and each year, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Who knew you could ever celebrate the red, juicy fruit for one day--- let alone five! This festival has been going on for almost 45 years and takes place from Wednesday through Sunday around Labor Day Weekend at Civic Park. There's live entertainment and kiddie rides to name the very least of the fair attractions. Kids flock to Tiny Tim Tomato Land; teens to the Gamers tent; and seniors beeline for Bingo. The family-friendly festival has grown to include a car and motor cruise-in and even a two-day civil war reenactment. Admission is free, but it costs $5 to park on the grounds.

Finally made it down here- this is one of those famous local festivals that I kinda avoid, since I expect to be overwhelmed by the crowds and underwhelmed by the attractions. I still need to get to the popcorn festival and the pumpkin festival, and I have been living near or driving through the towns they are in for essentially my entire life.Anyway, today Sweetie and I had a day off, and came down here to check it out. And had a pretty good time. It wasn't too crowded on Friday evening, parking and admission are free, and there were a lot of food stands and vendors. Every single person we met was friendly. There was all the usual fair food, which is enough to get me interested any day. Unfortunately there wasn't much tomato-based food. I tried spicy tomato jam (good, a little spicy, a little sweet) and tomato basil popcorn (damn good.) Everything else was sold out. So, we got some pizza (meh, but has tomato in it, right?), bourbon chicken (excellent for what it was,) and a brat, with slaw and pulled pork on it. The festival is held in a big park, which means real bathrooms. The fire department had an area where kids could play with hoses. Local groups and politicians had stands. It was a relaxing way to spend an hour or so, with plenty of food options, and that's really all I want from a festival. More tomatoes would be nice, but we still had fun.

I am a total foodie who loves attending festivals. I live in Cleveland and for about 5 years I've been wanting to check out the Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival- tomatoes being one of my favorite ingredients! In 2015, I loaded up the niece and nephew and my parents and finally headed down to Reynoldsburg.I could not have been more disappointed.I expected to find vendors where I could buy varieties of tomatoes I'd never heard of, homemade salsa, homemade tomato sauce, pasta, ketchup, appetizers, dessert, tomato, tomato, tomato.... right? nope. There was ONE booth selling tomatoes. One variety. The box contained about 14 large tomatoes... for $30. I wish I was kidding you. There was ONE booth with crafts. They were all really cute and tomato- themed. I expressed to the woman at this booth that I was expecting to see more local crafters and, ahem, tomatoes and she said 'Oh you know it's really hard to get people. A couple ladies just threw this together in 3 weeks.' Oh cool, so, thanks for lying to me.There were two booths with homemade local bakery (The one sponsored by the church was selling amazing lemon blossoms).The fried green tomatoes were a 6 out of 10. A home cook could do a better job with the batter.The rest of the vendors were typical county fair food vendors, businesses and organizations.My 6 yr old nephew wanted to do karaoke in the worst way... but it was in the beer tent which he of course wasn't allowed in.The UNLIMITED bouncy houses were $10 per kid. "Oh but they get to bounce all day". That would be okay if there were enough activities and booths to keep me here all day. We drove over 2 hours one way to be at this festival for about 90 minutes.The games were lousy. They had pre-teens running them who had poor attitudes and weren't paying attention at all. One girl was giving her phone number to the boy at the next booth although I was standing there with a very patient 2 yr old. After blatantly ignoring me for 2 minutes I said 'Young lady, are you working this booth?' to which she replied 'Yeah, hang on, just let me finish talking to him'. The local fire department had a cool feature where the kids used a fire hose to douse 'flames' on a mock house. They enjoyed that. Otherwise, the children were uninterested and bored. (though not as much as I) My nephew said "they should call this festival the earthquake festival, because it's bad". Ouch. Never again, Reynoldsburg, never again.

I wish this was a joke. I literally spent 2 minutes here......and 5 walking to my car and back. Twenty vendors selling pizza, fries, and lemonade. Nothing to do with tomatoes if that is what you wanna see. Beyond a joke. I was warned. I learned. Never again.

A festival that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the thing it's named after. Interesting concept. They might just as well have named this the diaper festival or the ass festival or the anything else festival because it would have had as much to do with anything as it did with tomatoes. There was one stand selling locally grown tomatoes (which were delicious), that's it. No tomato foods or drinks of any kind, no tomato themed items. Absolutely not even a mention of tomatoes anywhere but that one stand and one with information about the house that the supposed father of commercial tomato growing lived in. Absolutely ridiculous. Why would they call it the tomato festival? There was a small area of food carts with standard fair food and a very small sampling of the most cliche stuff. Plus fried green tomatoes. There were bounce houses for kids. A tent with tables of stuff for sale like storm windows for your house, bath tubs, Bibles, all the least interesting stuff they could find to sell that you don't expect to find in a flea market environment. There was a car show. A mediocre one but still a car show and I love those. That and the bouncy houses were really the only reason to come and not very compelling reasons if you have to drive to get here. I would say come here if you're really bored, can't find anything else to do, and happen to be in the neighborhood. Otherwise, it's not worth the gas money to get here. Total disappointment. Especially since I'd been meaning to come for years. I finally got here and was like "wow, this is the most overrated, underachieving fair I've ever seen."

I love me a good festival and with some family in town, I decided to try the Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival this year, and by the way, I LOVE tomatoes (in chili, tomato soup, on pizzas, raw from the garden, bloody mary's...). But I was so so SO very disappointed in the festival...where were the friggen tomatoes??There was a fun battle of the bands (4 live bands), activities for the kiddies, the world's tallest pin ball machine, regular AND zucchini funnel cakes, a great senior citizens center, a beer garden with watered down bud light, kettle corn, and free parking & free admission...but NO TOMATOES! After walking the area a few times we DID find one lonely tomato stand (selling tomatoes from a farm a few hours away). The nice ladies working the historic Livingston table did serve us a dixie cup of canned tomato juice but it was difficult for me to enjoy since my heart had already been broken by a misleading festival name. So much potential...The festival celebrates Alexander Livingston who was the "father of the modern tomato" which means he perfected how to grow the perfect looking, mushy & pink center, flavorless mass-produced grocery store tomato.

A wonderful, family friendly event. Thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment and food!

We attended the 2011 Tomato Festival - a first for our family even though we've lived in Columbus for 25 years. What a disappointment. We found scant tomato-based food offerings (fried green tomatoes and a ketchup-tasting tomato pie, yuck), and one lone vendor of fresh tomatoes, only a few of which appeared to be field-grown. The rest of the "festival" was typical and mediocre stuff you can find at any street fair across America, including the requisite car show. The atmosphere was dull and there was little of interest pertaining to the purported birthplace of the modern tomato.