Monica Martinez

​If you're looking for something adventurous at the Street Food Festival this weekend, consider this: crispy wax moth larvae tacos, or toffee-crisped mealworms on ice cream.

That's what Monica Martinez, owner of Don Bugito, will be selling at her stand. Martinez, an artist, first encountered meal worms in an art project. While designing her "wurm haus," she had to raise meal worms. After presenting her design in New York, she had her husband cook the worms for a celebratory dinner. They were a huge success, so she decided to bring her edible insects to the streets of San Francisco.

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Albert Law

The Street Food Festival is getting ready for you. Are you ready, too?

​As everyone should know by now, the S.F. Street Food Festival is coming up this weekend. Now, we love street food and we love food festivals, but sometimes, when faced with long lines, hoards of hungry people, and too many choices, we get a little overwhelmed.

So what are the best strategies for making the most of your Street Food Festival experience? Some of the SFoodie staffers like to walk around and check everything out before buying anything. Others just go for the first thing that looks yummy. One staffer says she gets "things on sticks, because they're always interesting."

Whatever your strategy, here are some good tips for everyone.

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​Suvir Saran Serves up Street Food (and Then Talks About It)

When: Sunday, August 28, noon to 3 p.m.
Where: Fort Mason Center
Cost: $150 for the whole conference

Two facts you may not have known about Top Chef alumnus Suvir Saran: he loves street food, and he doesn't really hate meat.

"I'm far from a meat or beef basher," he says. "I'm more Buddhist vegetarian -- if you put it in front of me, I'll eat it."

In fact, he actually dislikes the militant vegans or vegetarians who shove their agendas in your face, as he was (seemingly falsely) accused of doing on Top Chef. "If you practice kosher, that's one thing, but if you're just a vegan about a particular agenda... I'm intolerant of people shoving it into your face -- you'll charm people by bringing them to a table and giving them wonderful legumes and beans and feeding it to them with beef they love," he says.

And beef is something that, on occasion, finds a spot in his heart, too.

"I often dream that the beef coming in front of me is a beautiful blue steak," he says, also confessing his love for Thai beef salad -- "one of my favorite indulgences."

Steak or no steak, street food is one of Saran's passions, a delight that he says food critics are only beginning to explore and enjoy. "They said it was a 'brain-fucking orgasm,'" he says of a recent New York street food review. "A lot of the highfalutin dining people have gotten crazy about it."

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Chicken adobo with rice

​18th Annual Pistahan Parade and Festival
When: Saturday, Aug. 13-Sunday, Aug. 14, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Where: Yerba Buena Gardens
Cost: Free

Hungry? Head to the Pistahan Parade and Festival at the Yerba Buena Gardens this weekend for Filipino jazz, dance, arts, and, of course, food.

Get hungry now, because the festival will have an adobo cook-off and a balut-eating contest. For the uninitiated, balut is fertilized duck egg, eaten after being boiled. Adobo is a lot easier to take for newbies: it's meat (usually pork or chicken) marinated in a vinegar-garlic sauce and simmered. You could also try your luck in the longaniza (sausage) eating contest instead.

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Lou Bustamante

Feasting inside the Ferry Building

​Where: Ferry Building Marketplace, 1 Ferry Building (at Embarcadero)

When: Sun., July 10, 6-9 p.m.

Cost: $95 online via Eventbrite

The rundown: Summer is finally here, and so far it's been a stunner. We finally got to see what the fireworks looked like without fog, wore our bathing suits to the beach (and not just underneath warm clothes), and even found ourselves complaining that we couldn't sleep because it was too hot in San Francisco.

Weather like this means it's time to party. Do it in style on Sunday at CUESA's Summer Celebration.

The festivities begin with the convergence of 36 restaurants and food purveyors along with 21 beverage stations (5 nonalcoholic, 16 the way we like it) inside the Ferry Building. You can consume as much as you want; it's all included in the ticket price.

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Stacy Poulos/PostcardTravelers.com

Cheese ― see how it burns!

​Fortieth Annual Greek Festival Oakland

Where: Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension, 4700 Lincoln (at Monterey), Oakland, 510-531-3400

When: Fri.-Sun., May 13-15, 2011; 10 a.m.-11 p.m. (Fri.-Sat.), 11 a.m.-9 p.m. (Sun.)

Cost: $6 (children under 12 free); save $1 with this downloadable coupon. Free admission Sun., 5-9 p.m.

The rundown: The Bay Area's first Greek festival of the year promises roasted lamb galore: 1,400 pounds of leg, 1,700 pounds of shanks, 750 pounds of loin chops. Also flaming saganaki (cheese), sausages, kabobs, gyros, soutzoukakia (meatballs), and savory pastries like spanakopita and tyropitakia. On the sweet side, homemade baklava, loukoumathes (doughnuts), and a dozen more we can barely pronounce. Local and imported wines should enhance the music and folk dance performances, if not spur you to join the group dance lessons. Opa!

Hannah Quevedo/SFoodie, 2009

​Mark your calendar for La Cocina's Third Annual San Francisco Street Food Festival, scheduled for Sat., Aug. 20,11 a.m.-7 p.m. La Cocina is using language like "bigger, bolder, and better than ever," and "7 times the space, 6 times the food" ― claims that reference the original one-block Street Food Fest in 2009, not last year's event, which stretched across five blocks in the Mission. (Given that "7 times the space" calculation, that would make this year festival 35 blocks large.)

This time, La Cocina plans to secure seven blocks ― last year's Folsom street stretch, expanding two blocks north up to 22nd Street. Last year's 25th Street segment between Shotwell and Treat and Garfield Square remain the same.

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Luis Chong

Okinawa soba, annual feature of Japantown's Cherry Blossom Festival.

​Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival

Where: Japantown, Post and Buchanan Streets

When: Sat.-Sun., Apr. 9-10, and 16-17; grand parade and anime costume awards on Sun., Apr. 17

Cost: Free; donations accepted for JCCNC's earthquake relief fund

The rundown: S.F.'s 44th annual Cherry Blossom Festival devotes two weekends to gorging on snacks like teriyaki burgers, Imagawa-yaki (sweet azuki-paste-filled pancakes), takoyaki balls, yakitori skewers, musubi (spam sushi), and onigiri (rice balls), plus many unique items like Okinawa soba (assuming shipments weren't affected by the recent disaster in Japan). Live performances by San Francisco Taiko Dojo, martial arts demonstrations, Japanese folk dancers and singers, local high schools, modern Yosakoi dance, Buyo (mime), modern vocalist Ayumi Perry, and much more. There'll also be demos of Naginata and Nipponto (Japanese swords), including Tameshi-giri (test-cutting bamboo reeds), Batto-jitsu (sword-drawing skills), and Ken-jitsu (fighting skills).

Joseph Schell/SFoodie

Brace yourselves for this, L.A.

​The third annual installment of Oakland's Eat Real Fest moves from August to September this year. Jack London Square once again plays host to the festivities, which celebrate food crafting, sustainable sourcing, and mobile food, scheduled for Sept. 23-25. Organizers estimated last year that more than 110,000 people came to check it out.

Can't wait until September? Consider a trip down to Los Angeles, where Eat Real will host its first event on July 16-17 at the Helms Bakery District in Culver City.

Say it with us: Chuc mung nam moi!

​The Tenderloin's Little Saigon will be transformed this weekend for Sunday's 15th Annual Vietnamese New Year Tet Festival ("Hoi Cho Tet Tan Mao" in Vietnamese), organized by the Vietnamese Community Center of San Francisco. Tet (lunar New Year) is the most important holiday in Vietnam, traditionally a time of rest for both laborers and the land they cultivate, after months of hard work. Tet is about renewal, a time to get together with family and pay respects to ancestors.

San Francisco's celebration is a modest event compared to the humongous (and much older) Tet Festival in San Jose, Feb. 5-6 at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds.

Sunday's celebration ushers in the Year of the Cat, the only animal symbol in the Vietnamese 12-year cycle that differs from the Chinese zodiac, which is marking the Year of the Hare, or Rabbit. Nobody can quite account for the difference ― maybe a phonetic misinterpretation, a confusion of "mao," "mau," and "meo." Throw in "meow," and it's enough to confuse anybody.

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