It's been a big year for food trucks, nonstaurants, and street food in general. In addition to the buzz around things like the Crème Brûlée Cart and the Chez Spencer truck, this summer saw the birth of two new food festivals that are likely to grow and flourish again next year: The SF Street Food Fest, and the Eat Real Fest in Oakland. more ›

One of our discoveries at this past weekend's Eat Real Fest was a new art/collage magazine called Food+Sex. Publisher Mark Andrew Gravel was on hand selling copies on Saturday at Jack London Square, and we couldn't help but be curious -- food and sex being two of our (and everyone's) favorite things. The editors describe the mag thusly: "Collage art food magazine, Food + Sex, is a combined effort of artists, writers, farmers and foodmakers exploring how desire shapes the food environment... Included in its pages are a visual patchwork of uncommon art, essays and excerpts by thinkers, makers and doers from the food underground and beyond." more ›

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.)
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