Check out our slide show from photographer Joseph Schell, who roamed the weekend's Fabulous Food Festival at the Concourse Exhibition Center. Behold the oily, the truffle-y, the edibly crafty, and the otherwise delicious. 
Joseph Schell
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Organizers of Oakland's Eat Real Festival have a date for next year's event. A spokesperson told SFoodie the three-day street food fest will drop Aug. 27-29 next year in Jack London Square, in the same site this year's festival occupied. The main difference from 2009, according to Eat Real's Susan Coss? One word: more. "We'll have more street-food vendors, and more exciting food craft demonstrations," Coss said, citing the possibility of pizza-tossing and noodle-pulling demos, in addition to another butchery contest, a highlight of this year's fest. 
Jenny Oh/Eat Real Festival Organizers are promising more food at next year's scarf-athon.
In an acknowledgment, perhaps, that some 2009 festival-goers were frustrated by long food lines and sold-out vendors, Coss said that, instead of offering food on just Saturday and Sunday, next year's vendors would be hawking food on Friday, too. An estimated 70,000 showed up for this year's three-day event in August, which organizers deemed a success. And a blueprint -- with relatively minor tweaks -- for next year's festival. "We want more food, we want more days of food, and we really want to celebrate food craft," Coss said. The only other significant difference from 2009 is that the Jack London Square market is expected be operational by next summer, so JLS Partners will be in charge of the Eat Real Market. A reformatted Eat Real Fest Web site goes live tomorrow. Meanwhile, vendor applications are already available for download at the current site.
If the shrimp-infatuated Bubba from Forrest Gump had grown up, not in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, but in Half Moon Bay, California, he might have extolled the virtues of a different food to his new buddy Forrest. We imagine the following monologue, a revision to the original, uttered first by actor Mykelti Williamson, and then, naturally, imitated constantly, at least for a year or two, with varying degrees of success by coworkers, classmates, and Saturday Night Live cast members: "Anyway, like I was sayin', pumpkin is the fruit of the vine.You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sauté it. Dey's uh, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake rolls, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin caramel apples, and chicken pumpkin sausages. That -- that's about it."
SFAntii/Flickr Pumpkins are like chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.
Doesn't sound quite right, does it? The world-renowned Half Moon Bay Art + Pumpkin Festival has only been around for 39 years. Had he hailed from California, Bubba would have just missed it. This year's bash is happening October 17-18, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. The pumpkin will get its deserved due. Visitors may have pictures snapped at the giant pumpkin weigh-off, enter the pie-eating contest, and browse stalls pushing iffy pumpkin-themed art. Other pleasures await as well -- like hilarious cover bands, spectacular people-watching, and food. Macaroni and cheese with pumpkin seeds? Yes. Warm pretzels with pumpkin sauce? Definitely. Yet you won't by any means be limited to whatever guises the iconic orange globe can assume. Look out for local artichokes as well as Highway 1-ified fair classics -- linguiça sausage, hot beef sandwiches, corn dogs, fried calamari, tamales, garlic fries, clam chowder in bread bowls, nachos, hamburgers, grilled corn, well-dressed baked potatoes, and -- most assuredly -- massive kingly roast turkey legs worthy of Henry VIII's pudgy palm.
Some 70,000 people showed up for last weekend's Eat Real Festival, according to the event's communications director. Susan Coss said the busiest day was Saturday, which had the longest program of the three-day dual celebration of street food and sustainable food systems. "Thankfully the space was large enough to accommodate so many people so it didn't feel oppressively crowded," Coss told SFoodie.
M. Brody Big crowds showed up for the Eat Real Festival in Oakland.
The biggest surprise to organizers? The popularity of Saturday's Butchery Contest, which pitted three teams against each other in a high-speed hack-off. "There were thousands of people on the main lawn watching," Coss said.
Organizers plan to sit down in the coming weeks to talk about plans for next year's festival. Coss said she expects to announce next year's dates sometime in October.
Meanwhile, La Cocina director Caleb Zigas said the San Francisco Street Food Festival on August 22 raised approximately $40,000 for the Mission District nonprofit. Crowd estimates are difficult, but Zigas said police estimated 6,000-7,000 attendees per hour for the all-day festival that clogged a blocked-off stretch of Folsom. That's far more than the 5,000 total attendees Zigas was expecting before the event. "That's the reason we only got one block in the first place," he said, adding that he was "legitimately amazed" that so many people turned out for the festival. "It was an incredible boon for all the program participants and all the informal vendors."
The S.F. Street Food event was criticized for long lines and wait times for food. Zigas acknowledged that, while the criticism stung, he hoped to learn from it. "The majority of it was well taken," he said. Pretty much everybody said, We hope you do better next year."
Zigas said the $40,000 raised from food sales and the silent auction will help support general programming for the small-business incubator, which, like other nonprofits, has struggled with funding in the current climate.
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| M. Brody |
| The sign from SweetFace Bakery said it all. |
On the last day of Eat Real, the Oakland festival celebrating street food and sustainable agriculture, the weather joined the party. Sunday was sunny, but a breeze off the bay kept things cooler than muggy Friday or baking Saturday, thereby increasing the crowds. Diehard procrastinators who showed up on the last day joined people who woke up and said, Hey, it's a beautiful day, let's check out the food festival. Plus the regular Sunday Jack London farmers' market was on, with its own array of food stands (gyros, Turkish kebabs, Polish sausages, and kettle korn).
The JLS market regulars must have been astounded to wander a few yards and stumble into a street food wonderland, commencing with the impressively theatrical Gerard's Paella, whose enormous and picturesque pans drew long, long lines on a day of very long lines. Alas, we found the $5 bowl of chicken and garbanzo bean paella to be more generous than well seasoned. Still, consuming paella and a mug of IPA on a plush lawn while listening to soulful R&B from the group London Street was what Eat Real was all about.
M. Brody
Gerard's Paella looked fabulous, anyway.
At the ramen stand of Tim Luym (from S.F.'s Poleng Lounge), we chose noodles with pork broth. They came with onions, bean sprouts, and sesame seeds; additions of pork belly, fresh corn, and a hard boiled egg brought our total expenditure to $7. Additions of Japanese seven-spice chile seasoning and red shiso-pickled ginger brightened the bowl.
Friends recommended Soul Cocina's excellent bhel puri ($2), tarted up with chopped Full Belly Farm tomatoes, served in a cone made from Indian newspaper. The tiny stand boasted a bicycle-powered blender and a passionate, erudite spiel on bhel puri's history.
As on Saturday, the longest lines of the day Sunday seemed to be at Korean taco truck Seoul on Wheels; we decided we'd check out the truck at a later date at its regular Emeryville location. A somewhat shorter but slow-moving line at Roli Roti for porchetta sandwiches ($5) delivered us, eventually, to what proved to be the last rolled pork roast pulled off the rotisserie -- roasted potatoes had run out long before. After we'd gotten our sandwiches (crusty roll, jammy onions, bite-y arugula, served with excellent ripe tomato and basil salad), friends asked if we should warn the people at the back of the line that they were out of luck. "I'd fear for my life," I said.
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| M. Brody |
| The Good to Go market at Jack London Square. |
Saturday was hot again, but not as muggy as Friday, and we headed down to Jack London Square and the Eat Real celebration of street food ("putting the food back in fast") hungry, and with our pockets stuffed with fresh cabbage (in ones and fives).
Hungry, we scored pork hot links served with pimento cheese and crackers ($5) and barbecued turkey sliders served with roasted corn ($5) from Jim 'N Nicks Bar-B-Q, who'd driven their truck up from Birmingham, Alabama; and brisket sliders with potato salad ($5) and a pomegranate julep ($2) from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul wagon. Cynics might say that these were the first two booths whose path we crossed, but they were both on our list from studying the Eat Real Web site. And we liked everything; my companion said that barbecuing was the best way to prepare turkey. The brisket was moist, homey, and satisfying, the well-seasoned Yukon Gold potato salad was excellent, and the smoky roasted corn as good as it gets.
On further forays, we scored a spicy little cochinita pibil taco ($2) and a watermelon agua fresca ($2) from Chaac Mool, plump lobster rolls in buttery buns ($5) and creamy clam chowder ($5) from Sam's Chowder Mobile, and a lemon coconut cupcake, nicely decorated with a yellow candy cutout ($2) from Sweetface Bakery -- the only place where there wasn't a lineup, yet as we walked around with our laden plates, the most frequently heard comment from passersby was, "Where'd you get the cupcake?"
M. Brody
West Oakland urban farm nonprofit City Slicker Farm was on hand Saturday.
The lines were formidable, but not daunting. We eyed the pupusas at Estrellita's Snacks, one of our favorite spots at the weekend Alemany markets, and the Korean fare at Seoul on Wheels, and thought about the sweets available at the Crème Brulee Cart and Gobba Gobba Hey. We took a short tour through the Good to Go Market, in a space where Jack London Squares's new indoor market is due to open next year, and saw Iso Rabins selling foraged sea beans for $3 a boxful, and sampled organic blueberries, locally raised endive, and Tcho Chocolate. But we heeded the siren call of a field trip to Novella Carpenter's Ghost Town Farm, subject of her recent book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. A farm? In downtown Oakland?
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| M. Brody |
| The weather on day one? Hot and muggy, perfect for ice cream and beer. |
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| M. Brody |
| The $1 cones from Fenton's were a hit. |
Most of the ice cream purveyors were handing out free samples -- except for one, who sniffed, "We're not doing samples, it creates too much trash." But after judicious tasting, we spent our money on Scream Sorbet's exotic flavors, at $3 a scoop: coconut-Thai basil and pistachio on our first go-round, returning later for a scoop of Charentais melon. The savory beet sorbet would have made a chic accompaniment for pickled herring. And we were nuts about Ici's orange-chocolate chip ice cream ($2.85), made with candied orange rind (the lines were shorter at Eat Real than at Ici's College Avenue shop). Fenton's Creamery was doing a brisk business in $1 cones, making pomegranate ice cream on site, donating the proceeds to charity, and handing out free hats and buttons.
Lines were long but cheerful at the Beer Shed, which happily wasn't confined under a tent but al fresco. We splayed out on the lawn and listened to Steve Emerson and Anton Schwartz blow some cool jazz, with an even cooler backdrop of boats and the bay. Afterward we sat on hay bales at the Scratch Kitchen stage for three different demonstrations, complete with samples:
• Vanessa Barrington held forth on fermentation -- she prepared Indian raita and Salvadoran curtido.
• Iso Rabins of forageSF cooked sea beans with mushrooms and onions, and told the crowd that after Peter Jamison's cover story in SF Weekly about him earlier this year, he was called in for an interview by Presidio detectives who warned him not to collect miners' lettuce there or risk a $500 fine.
• The Fruit Girls, who run a Web site devoted to backyard fruit and vegetable bartering, demonstrated how to assemble homemade fruit pickers.
The weekend's sprawling Eat Real Festival kicks off today at 4 p.m. in Jack London Square. Behold the few last glimpses of tranquility before the hordes of street-food seekers descend. Our advice for the weekend? Be patient, wear SPF 30, and bring lots of cash. Full coverage Monday from SF Weekly food critic Meredith Brody. More pics after the jump.
J. Birdsall Imagine hundreds of street-food fanatics here in a few hours.
Oakland's ambitious three-day Eat Real Festival celebrating street food is so close we can almost taste it. Organizer Anya Fernald told SFoodie she's excited about "bringing together two worlds by linking affordable street food with local, sustainable food producers -- and doing it all with all our foods priced under $5."
loremipsum/Flickr Saturday's butchery contest promises to be every bit as thrilling as Ryan Farr's demo at Bloodhound last month.
Festivities begin at Jack London Square this Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. with music, beer, movies after dusk, an Edible Pursuit trivia contest, and an ice cream social. Eat Real's Susan Coss said she's especially excited about Friday's canning exchange -- bring your own home-canned goodies for trade or to enter in the Yes I Canned contest -- featuring canning demos with Happy Girl Kitchen and cookbook author Vanessa Barrington on Friday at 6 p.m.
You can get your serious food freak on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., when more than 50 vendors will be offering treats ranging from Vietnamese sandwiches and seafood chowder to cupcakes and ice cream, at prices ranging between $1 and $5. If you've never found the Crème Brulee Man or Sexy Soup Lady from their tweets, now's your chance to access them easily (and legally). The all-encompassing list ranges from high-end Asian street food from award-winning chef Tim Luym of S.F.'s Poleng Lounge, to down-home cooking from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County.
"I love Jim N Nick's BBQ from Birmingham, Alabama," Fernald said. "They're driving their rig up from down South and using it to barbecue gorgeous local pork and turkey from California ranches." She called it a new twist on local.
If you missed out on something at last Saturday's popular S.F. Street Food Festival, a number of the same purveyors will be here, including Chaac Mool, Estrellita's Snacks, and Zella's Soulful Kitchen. "Because Eat Real is free, except for entry to the Beer Shed," Coss said, "we have no way of estimating how many people will show up." So, caveat emptor: The lines may be just as long as the ones on Folsom last week. "But," Coss added, "we have so many other events going on that not everybody will be standing in line at the same time -- we hope!"
(Beer Shed alert: today is the last day to purchase discounted Beer Shed tickets online.)
This weekend, August 28 through 30, San Francisco resident Iso Rabins, founder of forageSF, will roll across the bridge to sling locally foraged sea beans at Oakland's Eat Real Festival. Sea beans are not a kind of seaweed, a weird, waterlogged cactus, or a euphemism for something yucky you don't actually want to eat. Also known as glasswort, a decidedly less delicious-sounding handle, they're dark-green stalks, grassy and briny in flavor, highly crunchable like snap-peas and nice fried tempura-style. In warmer months, sea beans grow wild in marshes and on beaches throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and thanks to intrepid dudes like Rabins, we're able to enjoy them without switching off the TV and heading out to hunt them ourselves -- which, probably, come to think of it, isn't the point at all. If only Safeway carried sea beans. That'd be even easier. Sigh.
.imelda/Flickr Sea beans (aka glasswort) for sale at Ferry Plaza.
On Saturday and Sunday, he'll post up near the marketplace's Embarcadero Street
entrance, vending specimens both raw and cooked. If you're there, try his sea beans with garlic, ginger, sesame, onions, and porcini, and buy a pound to take home. On Friday, he'll give a cooking demo as part of the fest's foraging and canning exchange. A cadre of wild food experts will be on hand to school you further.
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| J. Birdsall |
| Lines stretched across Folsom and onto the sidewalk. |
The S.F. Street Food Festival was the sister event to this weekend's Eat Real Festival in Oakland. Check out our slideshow of the day's highlights.
J. Birdsall
Aziza's Mourad Lahlou oversees the ingredients for Moroccan "taco" flatbreads.
It might seem strange that Eat Real, the Oakland festival celebrating inexpensive street food August 28th-30th, has also organized a week of multicourse sit-downs in some pretty impressive Bay Area restaurants. The idea, said Eat Real's Susan Coss, is to raise funds for the nonprofits helping to make Eat Real happen. And, she said, it's a chance to keep the celebration going during the week between the San Francisco Street Food Festival on August 22nd -- Eat Real's sister event -- and the Oakland festivities a week later.
shunafish/Flickr Oakland's Brown Sugar Kitchen will host one of the benefits.
Eight dinners are planned, each a benefit for a different nonprofit. We're especially intrigued by Brown Sugar Kitchen's five-course Southern, Caribbean, and barbecue feast on August 23rd ($45), featuring fresh herbs and produce from City Slickers Farms' urban gardens in West Oakland. We love the food at breakfast-and-lunch-only BSK -- dinner should be a rare treat.
Camino's four-course, family-style dinner ($75) benefiting Civil Eats on August 24th will feature goat cheeses from Andante and Harley Farms. On August 26th, a five-course street-food-inspired menu ($50) by Radio Africa Kitchen at Coffee Bar will center around wild-foraged ingredients donated by ForageSF, a benefit for La Cocina.
The complete list of dinners, as well as information about making reservations, are at the Eat Real Web site. Remember: Terrific food tastes even better when you're also doing good.
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| Sam Prestianni |
Great idea: Bring together dozens of the Bay Area's top chefs, winemakers, and mixologists for a Dionysian dream date to spotlight San Francisco as the premier city of epicurean delights. Great causes: Feeding America, Meals on Wheels, the San Francisco Food Bank, and Project Open Hand, all standing to benefit from the inaugural four-day festival's pricey tickets. They range from $40 for late-night dessert and dancing ("Chocolate Enhancement") to $250 for a "Gala Dinner" at Union Square's posh St. Francis ("American Culinary Pioneer Awards"). The essential question: Is it worth it?
At the SF Chefs. Food. Wine. opening ceremony last night, Mayor Gavin Newsom lauded our one-of-a-kind city as a food and drink nirvana where "people come from all over the world" to intoxicate their palates with the city's "diversity, innovation, ... and entrepreneurial spirit." Of course, he was right. There was no shortage of exotic enticements in the spacious tent's various booths, which featured sufficient bite-sized tasties and classy adult beverages to satisfy sophisticated and ravenous gluttons alike.
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| J. Birdsall |
| Farr at work: This could be your dining room table. |
Festival organizers recently published their growing list of auction items. If the Farr butchery turns you off, consider the chance to be chef for a day at Chez Panisse (don't worry -- something tells us they won't throw you on the sauté station during the lunch rush) followed by dinner for two. You can score Japanese cooking classes from Peko Peko Catering, learn how to knock out Salvadoran tamales from Maria del Carmen Flores of Estrellita's Snacks, and get a cheese-and-wine pairing in your home from the Cheese Shop of Healdsburg.
The Street Food Fest unfolds on August 22nd, along a blocked-off stretch of Folsom between 25th and 26th streets. Check out the full list of auction items at its Web site.
This weekend's first-ever SF Chefs.Food.Wine culinary festival is a chance to get up close and personal with local food and wine talent through tastings, classes, and even a cocktail contest. The cost might make you balk (ticketed events are $40 and up, day passes $150), but keep in mind that old adage that you get what you pay for.
Still, if your bank account isn't so bountiful, you can always take the freebie volunteer route. No guarantee at this late date that you'll get an email response from organizers, but it's worth a try. Just don't pull the lamest volunteer stunt ever -- disappearing when it's time to clean up. Shame on you!
To make the most of the festival, we recommend these four events:
1. Thursday night's Opening Reception at Union Square, $125: See TyFlo and various chefs and bar talent (Brooke Arthur, Martin Cate, Marco Dionysos, Dominic Venegas, Thad Vogler, Carlos Yturria, Neyah White, Reza Esmaili) dish out the goods. Hey, since the reception is sponsored by the San Francisco Chronicle, you may even spot Michael Bauer! Chefs from Chez Papa Resto, Aziza, Pizzeria Zanna Bianca, Corso, Gitane/Café Claude, The Chef's Table, Circa, Butterfly, Absinthe, Poleng Lounge, Midi, RNM, Frances, and the Moss Room will be there.
If reading about and searching for the Adobo Hobo cart this weekend wet your whistle for Filipino food, check out the grub and food contests at next weekend's Pistahan Fest at Yerba Buena Gardens (745 Mission at Fourth St.). The festival runs both Saturday and Sunday. 
pinatubo/Flickr Balut: First-timers might want to keep their eyes closed.
There's no guarantee of healthier adobo like the stuff talked up by Adobo Hobo, but you will be able to witness a live adobo cook-off and balut eating contest. For the uninitiated, balut is a nearly developed fertilized duck or chicken egg, considered a Filipino specialty (and, occasionally, a hazing rite for non-Filipinos). Feel free to check out the Health Pavilion if all that makes you feel too gluttonous. There will also be a parade at 10 a.m. on Saturday (Beale at Market), dancing, jazz and other music, and other cultural highlights. "Creativity Pavilion," anyone? E-mail pistahan2008@gmail.com with questions.
Given our crappy weather, ample sausages, and an embarrassment of generally meaty action catering to local carnivores, we're guessing vegans and vegetarians might seriously consider driving 40 minutes north of the city for this weekend's first annual Vegan and Vegetarian Food Festival. The free event revs up daily at 11 a.m. in La Plaza Park (corner of Old Redwood Highway and West Sierra Avenue in downtown Cotati). Food from 15 Sonoma-area restaurants and caterers will be sold, and the festival is timed to coincide with a national vegetarian conference happening at nearby Sonoma State. 
jahat/Flickr Time to get out of town.
Festival-goers will be able to take in crafts, music, martial arts, dance troupes, and performing kids' groups, all while wallowing in cruelty-free chow. Organizers are expecting some 5,000 folks to attend. The vendors lineup includes Raw Bliss Foods, Taqueria El Coronel, Sahara Middle Eastern Cuisine, Oliver's Market, Nan's Gourmet Foods, JK's Four Season, Seed, El Malecon, Fresh China, Karma's Indian Bistro, and Sally Tomatoes. Meals for Change is expected to serve Shepherdless Pie and Chunky Vegetable Paella, and sweets seekers may find nirvana in desserts from California Funnel Cakes, Pinky's Old Fashion Cotton Candy & Treats, and Del Secco's Gelato 'N Sweets. Nobody said giving up animal meant giving up indulgence, right?
For more information, call (707) 591-1786.
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| shanrev/Flickr |
| Not a favorite of local chefs. |
A spot check of favorite Italian restaurants revealed that not only won't there be lasagna on their menus today, it almost never makes an appearance. Incanto told us simply, "We don't do lasagna." Bar Bambino said they've only served it once: at a recent Monday night regional dinner featuring the cooking of Campania. And Perbacco chef Staffan Terje said, "It's kind of a fall item for a cold night. I do a free-form wild mushroom lasagna, folded in on itself -- not a very structured lasagna."
Neither Tuscan-inspired Delfina nor Ligurian-flavor Farina features the dish. After all, it is credited to Bologna, in Emilia-Romagna, so we wouldn't expect it on the Sardinian menu at La Ciccia. But surprisingly, it doesn't show up at family-style Joey & Eddie's either.
In fact, the only place we enjoy where we've spotted it is at Joe Dimaggio's, where a serving of wood-oven-baked lasagna (fresh pasta, Bolognese, Italian cheeses, and marinara) will run you $20.
Sampling the Bay Area's burgeoning street-food scene can be delicious but exhausting --combing the Mission, trawling the farmers' markets, tracking down peripatetic vendors via Twitter. Next month's Eat Real Festival will assemble a carefully curated collection of 40 trucks and carts from both sides of the bay in Jack London Square, August 29-30. (A one-day S.F. sister event organized by La Cocina kicks things off August 22.) We reported on Oakland's vendor list weeks ago, but it's grown since then. Here's the latest. 
Saturday and Sunday's highlights include Texas beef, North Carolina pulled pork, and chicken sandwiches from Phatt Matt's BBQ; falafel from a new Middle Eastern truck, Liba; individual savory pies, including one stuffed with creamy zucchini and a beef pasty, from the Pie Truck; warm rice salad and skillet-roasted padrone chiles from Localicious; and spiced nuts from caterer Oren's Kitchen. The pizza-oven-on-wheels of Eat Real's Anya Fernald, manned by Dario Barbone, will turn out farinata (chickpea-flour pancakes). The Society of St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda is planning to dispense appropriately homey comfort foods -- brisket sandwiches with potato salad and polenta with a mushroom ragout -- from a truck.
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Remember how freaky it seemed the first time you heard about the garlic ice cream served up every year at the Gilroy Garlic Festival? (It starts today, by the way.) Not sure about you, but we've moved on to a fascination with the truly weird crap cooked up at American food fests. From spring to fall, festivals around the nation seem engaged in a competitive gross-out (impaled on sticks and deep-fried) to see who can outdo each other. Here are five we find nauseatingly fascinating (check festival Web sites for exact dates).
1. West Virginia Roadkill Cook-Off |
| bobkatzbar.com |
You have until July 19th to get to the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton for carnival rides, pig races, concerts with one-step-removed headliners like Bucky Covington and Solange Knowles, and, those portable treats, snacks on a stick.
Meredith Brody Corndogs come in two sizes: delicious and more delicious.
There's the classic corndog, of course, deep-fried cheese on a stick (surprisingly pleasant, like a neatly contained grilled cheese), and deep-fried Twinkies and Snickers with optional Hershey's syrup. There's the Twister Dog wrapped in potato, and the twisted potato, aka the Tornado. Shiskaberries are chocolate-dipped fruit on a stick (because you need a little fiber, and deep-fried artichokes don't come on a stick). Chocolate-dipped frozen bananas and cheesecake (nuts and sprinkles optional) are always irresistible, if only because of the heat.
Finally, if you consider rib bones and foil-wrapped corn husks sticks, there are ribs and corn-on-the-cob from Big Bubba's Bad BBQ. Four out of five carnies told us Bubba's was their favorite. The fifth brought food from home. More photos after the jump.
San Francisco's Street Food Festival -- sister event to Oakland's Eat Real Festival -- will turn three of the Mission's best-known unlicensed food hawkers legit for a day. As part of the August 22 festival, Crème Brulée Cart, Sexy Soup Lady, and one of the neighborhood's bacon-wrapped hot dog vendors will sell food they've prepped at La Cocina Community Kitchen, the small-business incubator for low-income minority women.
Kevin.The.Great/Flickr A bacon-wrapped hot dog cart will go above-ground for a day.
La Cocina director of operations and festival organizer Caleb Zigas, who calls the unpermitted food sellers "informal vendors" -- suggested that legitimizing the food sellers would have an educational component. "We're all about showing people it's possible to make the transition from the informal to the formal economy," Zigas told SFoodie.
The daylong Street Food Festival is set to take over a closed-off block of Folsom between 25th and 26th Streets, and will include a beer and spirits garden. Besides the unlicensed vendors, there'll be food from La Cocina's two-dozen client businesses, and eats from a handful of city restaurants. So far, Zigas told SFoodie, Poleng Lounge, SPQR, Heaven's Dog, and La Mar Cebicheria Peruana have all committed. The festival is technically free, but food will be for sale, either through cash on site, or via ticket books (called Passports) ranging from $50 to $150.
Organizers of the Oakland edition of the Eat Real Street Food Fest in August have been announcing the event's growing vendor list one by one on Twitter. Instead of tracking down these peripatetic purveyors on their erratically scheduled street rounds, Eat Real is gathering up a carefully curated group for this one-time-only feeding frenzy. And to save you from scrolling through Eat Real's Twitter feed, here's the lineup so far:
Each vendor will feature one or two signature items, all made with some sustainable ingredients, and nothing priced over $5. And there's more to come.
The producer of the troubled Great American Food and Music Fest said he's making plans for next year's festival even as he's figuring out where to lay the blame for the June 13 event at Shoreline in Mountain View.![foodandmusicfest[1].jpg](http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/foodandmusicfest%5B1%5D.jpg)
Think you can handle another one?
"I'm so excited about next year," said event producer Jim Lewi. "We're coming back. An event like this is strictly a numbers game, and we know how to do it right." This year's inaugural festival -- a mashup of food vendors, Food Network personalities, local chefs, and bands -- was plagued, at least at the start of the 10-hour event, by long lines, food shortages, and general chaos. Lewi said 8,600 attendees got in, with several more thousands unable even to make it through the gates. SF Weekly was a co-sponsor of the festival.
Lewi reiterated to SFoodie that he's taken the blame for problems at the festival, personally answering thousands of angry emails and refunding more than half the ticket gross. "We've given pretty much every dollar back," he said, adding that he himself has lost well over $1 million from the debacle. The producer said he's held four postmortems to figure out precisely what went wrong. "In 20 years of doing festivals, I've never had the entire audience show up at doors," Lewi said. He'd previously suggested that some of the food shortages were due to lackluster advance sales, followed by throngs of last-minute attendees rushing the gates.
Remember Slow Food Nation, the sprawling food fest that gripped San Francisco over Labor Day weekend last year? Organizers had pledged it would be an annual event, with the likelihood that this year's fest would again take place in S.F.
sarahmroos/Flickr Last year's Slow Food Nation eat-in at Dolores Park is serving as a national model.
This morning, Brooklyn-based Slow Food USA announced a change in plans that appeared to acknowledge lessons learned from last year's event. Instead of the confab of chefs, food artisans, and farmers, Slow Food USA is focusing on, well, just plain eating. This year on Labor Day, Slow Food is launching its Time for Lunch campaign with a series of nationwide community potlucks, called eat-ins.
Modeled after the eat-in that snaked through Dolores Park during Slow Food Nation last year, the idea is that local Slow Food chapters will organize communal meals in public spaces on Monday, September 7. Participants are asked to bring a cooked dish and begin to organize around Time for Lunch, a Slow Food initiative seeking to improve lunches and initiate farm-to-table curricula for the more than 30 million kids under the National School Lunch Program. Slow Food's ultimate goal? Influencing the Child Nutrition Act, which Congress will reauthorize later this year.
Happy National Pecan Sandy Day, everyone! The truth is, there's a different (and often strange) national food holiday for just about every day, even leap years. Here are our picks for 10 of the most awesome:
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| But isn't Drink Beer Day every day? |
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| For those who need a reason to indulge. |
A co-producer of last weekend's trainwreck Great American Food and Music Fest began to cry as he talked to SFoodie about his life since Saturday. "I haven't slept," said Jim Lewi from his home office in Southern California, describing how he's personally answered some 1,700 emails left on the festival Web site, mostly - as you might imagine -- sending apologies. "It literally started on Saturday afternoon," Lewi said. "My BlackBerry went crazy."
shaunandjenny/Flickr Can you say 'clusterf**k'?
The longtime rock producer seemed to take personally the messages describing how in some cases the festival -- which suffered from hours-long lines and food shortges - ruined attendees' birthdays and anniversaries. "I'm taking responsibility for what happened," Lewi said. "At the same time, is there a future for this event? There is no question in my mind." The producer is compiling notes about what went wrong from both attendees and participants such as concert producer Live Nation and food company Aramark, in preparation for next Monday's formal postmortem. "We want to find out who dropped the ball, when they dropped the ball, and how they dropped the ball."
Lewi reported that ticket sales prior to the event were sluggish, followed by a surge of last-minute interest, one reason food providers may have undercalculated amounts. "There didn't seem to be a lot of buzz around town, but then all of a sudden we saw the traffic start to back up."
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| Marisol Segal |
| If you actually got food, there was reason to celebrate. |
Hey, mambo! World pizza-tossing champion Tony Gemignani rocked the dough in his self-described "truly Italian" fashion at Sunday's North Beach Festival. Beer-swilling fans called out, danced, and jumped up and down as Gemignani performed. His crowd-pleasing tricks? Twirling dough into a shade-providing disc, pinching it into ever-growing size while in midair, then rolling it across his shoulders. The grand finale: catching the dough on his back. A Food Network and pizza pro, Gemignani owns Pyzano's Pizzeria in Castro Valley, an International Pizza School, plus a restaurant he swears is opening in North Beach in two weeks. For Gemignani, being a certified master from the Scuola Italiana Pizzaioli seems to equal a lot of (tasty) dough. More evidence of Gemignani's chops after the jump.
Mary Ladd Dough boy: Twirl master Tony Gemignani.
Bix
San Francisco, CA 
Cafe at Chez Panisse
Berkeley, CA 
Fairmont Hotel
San Francisco, CA 
Bottom of the Hill
San Francisco, CA 
Cha Cha Cha
San Francisco, CA 
Ducca
San Francisco, CA 
foam order.com
