8.22.2011

Foodie Weekend Part 1

It was a serious foodie weekend with Saturday being La Cocina's 3rd annual San Francisco Street Food Festival and Sunday being SF Food War's Salsa-licous salsa competition. There was definitely no baking going on just a lot of eating. Here's how Saturday went down:

We pre-purchased a $50 passport, which I would recommend it if you're planning to try a lot of different foods. It gets you one free drink, a souvenir passport that lists every vendor, and a "secret snack," which was a random bite of quesadilla courtesy of Mission tortillas, an event sponsor.

Me and my better half arrived at about 10:30am, 30 minutes before the event started and had a chance to walk up and down before the place became packed (with 50,000 people!) Right at 11am the place was filled but the crowd was generally mild, smiling and sedated from all of the delicious food in their bellies. We lasted about 3.5 hours there and here's what we tried:

Azalina's, based out of San Francisco, sold at various SF markets
- Malaysian fried peanut taco (small bite): The only vegan item we saw and pretty darn good. A fried flour tortilla with a peanut, tofu filling.
- Penang curry bomb buns: two curry shredded chicken sandwiches on deep fried rolls (big plate). This is the only place where we got the small and big bite plates, they both had a spicy pickle topping and a creamy sauce. This was the last thing we tried and our favorite. Friend and flavorful!

The Peached Tortilla, Austin TX, Food Truck
- Pad Thai taco (small plate): a chicken taco with peanut sauce, bean sprouts on a thick flour tortilla.

Nettie's Crab Shack, San Francisco, Restaurant
- Dungenous crab devilled egg (small plate): A perfectly hard boiled egg with plenty of creamy crab filling. Our breakfast appetizer.

Flour + Water, San Francisco, Restaurant
- Fried peppers and corn (small bite): a let-down, I think there big bite plate, a Porchetta sandwich was meant to be the star. It is still supposed to be an amazing restaurant that I'm dieing to go to.

Zella's Soulful Kitchen, based out of Oakland, Caterer, also sold at Whole Foods in Noe Valley
- Jacked Up Hush Puppies (small bite): just regular ol' hush puppies but they were good. The big bite, a shrimp po' boy sandwich, looked awesome.

Embrace Sweets, Los Angeles, sold at LA Farmer's Markets
- Caramelized banana Nutella brownie: very fudgy.
- Chocolate chip cookie: soft and nice flavor, but I think it was made with shortening.

We purposely avoided two of our favorite food trucks/carts: Curry Up Now out of San Francisco, because we ate it twice the week before, and Big Ass Sandwiches out of Portland, because we ate it twice during our weekend trip to Portland last month. We had to give other places a fighting chance.

I highly recommend taking a good look at which vendors you don't want to miss before you arrive. There where so many more we wanted to try but couldn't get to. Both events benefited various worthy Bay Area nonprofits.

11:30 am

crates, zip ties and plywood bar tables

Seoul Sausage guys. Fear the beard!

Jello art

The Peached Tortilla truck

Pad Thai taco

Look at that grip! (trip to Portland)

Big Ass Vegetarian sandwich

3 comments:

  1. Such a good event! The company was perfect, the food was amazing and it was really well set up. It was great for wandering around eating and people watching. I cant wait till next year because its only going to grow and get better.

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  2. I NEED to try that Pad Thai taco - portable Pad Thai!! Love the Jello art shot! :)

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  3. All the pictures were taken from a phone! :P & I'm pretty sure we could re-create the pad thai taco- The Peached Tortilla truck lives in Texas.

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