More Than Anything, S.F.'s Street Food Festival Celebrates Entrepreneurship

John Birdsall/2009

Last year's SF Street Food Festival: Thrilling. And not.

​Yes, last year SF Street Food Festival was equal parts thrilling and #Fail: More expectant humanity thronged a single block of Folsom, even, than rushes the Sunday beer bust at the Eagle, or the Saturday afternoon checkout at Bi-Rite, in lines as depressing as the gray summer sky. After grabbing the festival equivalent of low-hanging fruit (packaged snacks from Delicias Salvadorenas and Onigilly), we wandered the blocks to grab a table at Schmidt's. But here's the thrilling part: Precisely that the festival was overmobbed in the first place. Despite mainstream skepticism that hounded the city's nascent cart-foods movement earlier last summer, San Francisco showed up. Hugely.

This year, La Cocina's Caleb Zigas has been touting the festival's upgrades: more city real estate, plus a proliferation of satellite and add-on events (after party, Facebook challenge, conference), that, frankly, even we're a little confused. And despite the fact that, even with more space to stretch out in this year, some vendors might still run out of food: San Francisco's interest in food served up on its streets, or parking lots, or Ferry Building arcades, has kept pace with the number of vendors offering it.

John Birdsall/2009

Aziza's Mourad Lahlou (with shaved head): The festival brings together cooks from all across the spectrum.

​The card-table vendors who pioneered the city's new wave of street food last year made it possible for 2010 Summer of Truck, which has meant food with greater finesse than ever, and that covers a broader range of cooking traditions. Of course, the Street Food Fest is predicated on supporting La Cocina's small-business clients, who dominate the list of 40 or so food vendors slated to set up tomorrow. And nearly a dozen brick-and-mortar restaurants are representing ― what? ― not selling on the street, exactly, but entrepreneurship itself. Unlike Off the Grid, which is, perhaps, a purer celebration of pavement cuisine, the Street Food Festival is the one time every year cooks from across the city's spectrum get together to feed us. Tomorrow's festival won't strictly be an embrace of food calibrated to sell on the streets, but of the food that can bring the city together. Even if we get a little jammed in the process.

SF Street Food Festival
When: Sat., Aug. 21, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Where: Folsom from 24th to 26th Streets, 25th from Treat to Shotwell, and Treat along Garfield Square
To pre-purchase food and drink passports, go the festival's ticket page