Crowds and crowds and crowds of people lined the streets on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in August in the Mission District, all celebrating the wonderful street food San Francisco has to offer. The San Francisco Street Food Fest offered a little bit of everything, with a variety of ethnic foods, snacks, desserts and drinks. Covering 3-4 blocks, carts and stands were lined up side-by-side and people were all waiting to get some of the delicious offerings from each of the vendors.
Many of the participants have their own food cart somewhere in San Francisco or the greater Bay Area. Quite a few have a huge following, via Twitter and Facebook or just through word of mouth. Many have also gained publicity from the Farmers Market at the Ferry Building, setting up shop on Thursdays and Saturdays throughout the year. But the festival also featured several restaurants, who cooked up just a small sampling of the food on their menu. Places like Flour + Water, Delfina, Nombe, Namu and Aziza were all in attendance, joining food cart heavyweights like RoliRoti, Kung Fu Tacos, Gobba Gobba Hey, and the Creme Brulee Cart.
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Kung Fu Taco
As is the case with many events like this, there was both good and bad. The food was amazing. You literally could walk down a street and grab some ramen, then stop for a taco, some falafel, corn on the cob, funnel cake, chicken wings... I could go on and on. They had a beer and cocktail garden on each end of the fair. And there was a tremendously wide variety of food. When most people think street food, they think about taco trucks or hot dog stands. While those were readily available, the new era of street food involves pretty much anything that can be cooked on a grill or burner outside. I saw a number of different chicken dishes offered, salads, curry to go along with the tacos and burritos, hot dogs and hamburgers you would normally expect. |
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| Food from Onigilly |
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| Cooking up corn |
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| Preparing to barbecue corn |
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| Sausages on the grill |
Now the not so good. When I got to the festival in mid-afternoon, many of the items were already sold out. I don’t know if it was poor planning by the organizers or the carts themselves, but that really shouldn’t have happened. If they needed more space to store extra ingredients, they could have spread the stands out a bit more, which would have also helped with the long lines. I would figure on average, the longest lines had a minimum 15-20 minute wait. That can be a long wait when you have to do it 3-4 times if you wanted to try the most popular foods. Things were also very crowded, unless you were walking on the sidewalk behind the booths. But overall, I think the organizers did a fine job of handling a bunch of hungry folks.
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| Steamed Buns |
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| Creme Brulee Cart |
I haven’t had the chance to experience a lot of the food carts that are already out there in San Francisco. But having met many of the proprietors, I plan on trying to visit more in the coming months. They are a great source of a quick snack or lunch for business people. And everything that I tried tasted great. The growing movement of using social media is a wonderful thing and it has quickly advanced to the food industry. Many of the carts use Twitter to give out their location for the day or any changes/additions to their menus. For many of the chefs, Twitter is becoming the best form of word-of-mouth advertising for their product and an absolute necessity in this day and age. With the advent of smartphones and the internet at the tip of your fingers, it truly appears to be a source of advertising and publicity that is just starting to expand.
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| Finding a seat wherever you can |
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| After eating these chicken tacos... |
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| ...some may have needed this booth! |
Overall, this was a fun event with lots of great food. It is so exciting to see so many people excited about street food and the movement that continues to grow with each passing day. Hope they continue this event and next year, bring more food!
