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SFist Tonight
It was a festival-heavy weekend for us, what with Outside Lands bridging the generations through music, food, wine and Tom Jones, and the first annual Eat Real Festival in Oakland, a celebration of street food, local beer and sustainable eating. Unlike the SF Street Food Fest the previous weekend -- which was delicious but way more mobbed than anyone was prepared for, and by some accounts, not very "street" -- Eat Real was crowded but civilized, and spread out on a few blocks of the newly rebuilt Jack London Square along the Oakland Estuary. Over a dozen vendors who operate out of taco trucks pulled the trucks into the plaza and along the promenade, and they were joined by a few dozen more vendors with carts and tents. The theme of the affair was "putting the food back in fast food," and pretty much all the offerings were of the cheap and hand-held variety, all between $2 and $5 -- except the beer, served out of a shed rigged with 40 rotating taps, which came out to about $6 a glass if you bought a four-glass tasting. Food highlights included some awesome corn empanadas with chimichurri sauce from El Porteno, the chocolate cupcake with caramel icing from Sweetface Bakery, the B.L.A.T. from newcomer Jon's Street Eats, some simple fried smelts with aioli from Whole Foods' Tapas To Go truck, and a downright perfect mini-burger from 4505 Meats. Also present were mobile mainstays like the twitter.com/thepietruck, Seoul on Wheels (who are making a comeback) and the Amuse Bouche folks. (See a full food slideshow at SF Grub Street.)
In addition to the massive amounts of food, the weekend-long festival included live cooking demonstrations, music and dance performers, films, and a huge marketplace featuring farmers, local food producers, and sustainable food organizations like Oakland's City Slicker Farms, which helps turn vacant lots into urban farms. But the centerpiece of the weekend was Saturday evening's butchery contest, in which two teams (one composed of three "artisanal" butchers from Bay Area restaurants and butchers, and the other from Marin Sun Farms) competed to butcher an entire quarter steer in under 30 minutes. The team from Marin Sun Farms made quick work of the animal, and to the cheers of all meat-eaters present, they took home the prize both for speed and the overall efficiency of the butchery. See some pics here (vegans beware! NSFV!), and take our word that this fest is mos def worth the trip next year.
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This Weekend We Got Fat and Learned Butchery
Least tasteful lesbian joke I've heard in awhile. Nice!
Too bad I spent the day in San Jose on Saturday ... this Eat Real looked fun, and would've been an excuse to ride the Oakland/Alameda ferry boat across the bay. Next time ...
Eat Real > SF Street Food Festival
I heard the beer was too expensive (4 half-pint pours for $25) and that the choices were all things you can find easily, but that is, literally, the only complaint I heard from people who went. Sounds like they pulled off a great festival
*I realize that at most festival/sports/concerts, we pay $7 for a cup of not-so-awesome brew, so in comparison to "festival" beer prices, it wasn't too bad.
I heard the beer was too expensive (4 half-pint pours for $25) and that the choices were all things you can find easily, but that is, literally, the only complaint I heard from people who went. Sounds like they pulled off a great festival
*I realize that at most festival/sports/concerts, we pay $7 for a cup of not-so-awesome brew, so in comparison to "festival" beer prices, it wasn't too bad.
So apparently it is possible to hold a food festival event without it devolving into an operations clusterfuck. Who knew?
The beer was beyond overpriced at $7 for a single 8 oz. pour or $25 for 4...
Thankfully the restaurant on the pier(the name escapes me) had a small stand selling Guinness/Stella for $5/bottle... still expensive, but much cheaper than the festival beers.
Also, I was surprised to see the $7 price for the beer... especially since the festival touted itself as having a max of $5 for food/drink items.
Funny... all the pours we got were at least 10oz, if not a full glass. You must have just gotten a stingy pourer. Also, if you hung around at the 'Meet the Brewers' table at all, you could have drank free all day.
the food was truly delicious -- i went around dinnertime on saturday and again for brunch/lunch on sunday. fortunately, the lines were indeed reasonable (though a couple offerings were in very high demand). beautiful weather too.
Most of the food was pretty good, but the tiny beers for $7 was inexcusable. Both times I bought beer, I ended up with about 6 ounces of liquid in an 8 oz. cup. Would have been a complete fail, except for the fact that Heinhold's was selling pints for $5.
And next time they need to print the menus at each stand in a font big enough to read from 30 feet away, because that's how long all the lines were.
So y'all are complaining about the beer? It was a *food* festival ferchristssake. What did you expect?
IMO it was an amazing production! Great inexpensive food, lines were longish but tolerable, plenty of activities and an excellent location with space to accommodate everyone. SF really needs to take a page from Eat Real's playbook. They did it right.