The first annual SF Street Food Fest went down on Saturday, and pretty much half of San Francisco showed up to the one-block-long festival. The thing got a ton of buzz, a piece on NPR, links on a hundred websites, and as we all know, street food and nonstaurants are all the rage right now. As the folks at Beer & Nosh put it, "It was crowded, expensive, and with long lines for food that wasn't exactly street food. Yet the crowds were docile and friendly, the food delicious, and in spite of all of the problems, it seemed like a good time was had by all." We give special props to Jamie Lauren's gourmet sausage dog from Absinthe and the BBQ chicken sammie from Zella's Souful Kitchen. Also, KQED has a nice slideshow.

The booze garden, hosted by Cantina and featuring a trio of tasty concoctions as well as beers from Oskar Blues and wines from Beringer, got especially crazed in the mid-afternoon peak hours, but no fights broke out, many hundreds got day-drunk, and all proceeds went to charity -- La Cocina kitchen incubator for women to be exact. Our guess is, given the success of the event, it will be expanded to at least two city blocks next year...