LA Street Food Fest
The Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California
The Rose Bowl becomes the Meat and Veggie Bowl
In terms of U.S. cities, L. A. has one of the largest street food cultures, made popular by the ubiquitous taco trucks and expanded by the somewhat recent gourmet food truck phenomenon. Besides the vehicular street vendors, there are also an army of push cart and folding table vendors, as well as fledgling restaurants springing forth from aspiring chef’s homes and spilling out on to the sidewalks and streets of L.A. The problem these days isn’t how to find something to eat, but how to select a single vendor to satisfy the munchies. Shawna Dawson and Sonja Rasula aspired to bring a seemingly random collection of these vendors together in one place, and to raise money for charity to boot. Dawson and Rasula are co-founders of L.A. Street Food Fest, which held its second extravaganza recently in Pasadena’s fabled Rose Bowl. Before you conjure up images of Kogi’s tires ripping up the finely manicured gridiron, the trucks were parked just outside the stadium with tented booths lined up on either side of the field. Food truck vendors cohabitated with restaurants, pushcarts, taco shacks and caterers essentially leveling the playing field to place the focus on the food, not the delivery system. Truck operators ran (literally) through the tunnels to their trucks where the food was being prepared, while other vendors cooked at the back of their booths or at makeshift kitchens in the bowels of the stadium.
Chuy Tovar (Arandas Imports), Alex Chu (Dim Sum Truck) and Javier Cabral (Teenage Glutster)
In the open sun, the food wasn’t the only thing baking, broiling and frying – at the end of the field were two makeshift biergartens where Singha cooled off diners with one of the few cold beverages available (the only water available was from the fountains outside the restrooms). Along the walkway on the second tier, various food vendors set up shop sandwiching in tequila bottlers offering tastings in half-sized shots. A section outside to the right of the stadium featured vendors of non-food items and a small (but very popular) section where ice cream appeared to be the only thing actually served out of trucks. Attendees holding VIP tickets were granted access to the event at 4 PM before the teeming masses yearning to eat, yet the lines continued to grow, even before the 6 PM general admission crowd swarmed in. As if this amazing variety of unique and delicious food wasn’t enough, a DJ spun music to dine by followed by bands Warpaint and The Deadly Syndrome (who provided live music on a concert stage at the end of the field). Throughout the event, the stadium’s Diamond Vision screens were displaying tweets sent to @LAfoodfest, utilizing the system that put many of the food trucks on the map to the instant gratification of the iPhone-laden vendors and patrons. Read the rest of this entry »
