Lawrence resident Dave Buller, left of center, entertains his friends with a story during the Taste of Lawrence Wednesday on the lawn next to Meadowbrook Apartments. With Buller are Lawrence residents clockwise from front left, Angela Loch, Christina Diedel, Dave Loch and Dan Diedel. Both familiar and unfamiliar faces alike mingled over samples of food and drink from various Lawrence establishments.

A few rain clouds couldn’t stop about 1,000 hungry Lawrencians from digging into the best food local restaurants could offer.

This year’s Taste of Lawrence featured the traditional (Italian sausages from Wayne & Larry’s) and the exotic (jerk rubbed swordfish with shallot mango chutney from Ten restaurant at the Eldridge Hotel), all in an effort to thank area educators for their work.

Contance Wolfe attended the event at Meadowbrook Apartments while promoting a conglomerate of local, independent restaurants called Lawrence Originals. She said she was impressed by the variety of dishes.

“I’ve been looking at everyone’s plates, and it all looks so good,” she said, as she waited in line for ahi ceviche salad from Marisco’s, one of 25 restaurants involved.

The Taste of Lawrence, a tradition for more than 30 years, helps area businesses support local educators, said Susan Esau, executive director of the Lawrence Schools Foundation.

“For one thing, it’s a great place to network,” she said. “By doing it, we also thank educators. It gives businesses an opportunity to take part in thanking the educators, and they have fun.”

Lawrence Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Chuck Warner said the event was one of the chamber’s “premier” events.

“Education is a big part of our community, and that’s one of reasons we do this,” he said. “Lawrence is really about education. It’s a big industry here, if you will. It’s important to the people that live here, and so we think it’s appropriate to have a chamber mixer and welcome the new teachers.”

This year’s event also focused on the chamber program Grow Green.

“The Grow Green task force has been real active in trying to set this up, so we’ll recycle most everything,” he said.

“We’re definitely trying to promote green business, so I think (the chamber) is trying to do some of that themselves, so this is a big event to show how you can do that,” said Leticia Cole, a Grow Green committee member.