This Weekend We Got Fat and Learned Butchery at Oakland's Eat Real Fest

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.)