SF Street Food Fest

Live Shots: SF Street Food Fest fills us up quickly

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The weather was gorgeous, the lines weren’t too long, and the people were friendly — and hungry — at the sixth annual SF Street Food Festival last Saturday.

About those shorter lines, though — that meant we had access to pretty much any food we wanted in less than 10 minutes! (Except for the ever-popular ramenburger from Nombe, the line for which stretched almost the length of a block.) Uh oh, we were faced with unlimited choices, too many for our stomachs to bear, try as we might. And we might!

Highlights for us included the octo okono from Stones Throw (basically a fried octopus popsicle), excellent and tender turkey momos (Nepalese dumplings) from Bini’s Kitchen, Thai iced tea gelato from Secret Scoop, thickly wrapped beef pho rolls from Rice Paper Scissors (with awesome Vietnamese coffee), sharply spiced ahi tuna kitfo (a kind of tartare mixture) from Radio Africa Kitchen, and aquavit-cured salmon crostinis from Chef Pelle Nordic.

Things causing a general sensation: a huge portion of Berber-spiced lamb from The Whole Beast, Hella Vegan Eats‘ potsticker burrito, schnitzel sliders from Little Red Riding Truck, and a smoked salmon rueben from Fine & Rare.

This is supposedly the festival’s last year (at least in the Mission), partly due to neighbor complaints about parking (sigh), but I have a feeling we won’t see the last of it. Although you did just see the last of that schnitzel slider you left unattended on your plate, yoink.  

 

Can’t-miss treats at the upcoming SF Street Food Fest

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The smells of deliciousness were overwhelming. Where do we start?!

As Sam Love and I wandered around the La Cocina media preview for August 17’s San Francisco Street Food Festival, everywhere we looked there were delightful taste treats, colorful, fresh and also deep fried. I’ll take four of each, thank you.

We made the rounds, chatting with fantastic chefs who are living their dreams, whipping up flavors from around the world. We tried everything and, while we enjoyed it all, becoming clean plate champions many times over, there were three highlights that made our short list. If you don’t have the stomach to make it to all the vendors at the Street Food Festival, we’d recommend trying these first:

Chiefo’s Kitchen
Chiefo served plantain and chocolate bread pudding that was soft and heavenly, but also punched back with a sinful slap of rum. Chiefo’s Kitchen West African flavors are not to miss. Check her out at the Night Market!

Azalina’s Malaysian
I live for Azalina’s smile. She could hand me a slice of cold leftover pizza, and with that smile, it would taste like the most exquisite dish. The fact is, Azalina cooks with tremendous love and care, and eating her food is therapy for the soul. She is an amazing chef, from a long family line of street vendors from Penang, and her food explodes with the island’s spices, but also takes advantage of our freshest local California produce. She prepared sweet potato dumplings, decorated with colorful fruit and veggie bonnets. So yum!

Hella Vegan Eats
Two words: doughnut burger. Wait — it’s not what you’re thinking! It’s a doughnut sandwich stuffed with a beet and kamut patty, topped with kale, pickled red onions and dill weed, and squirted with secret sauce. It’s pretty much the cutest thing ever, perfectly balancing the most unhealthy and healthy food items in a few giant bites, and worth unhinging your jaw for. Vegan can definitely be bad-ass.

Photos by Bowerbird Photography

Gourmet fresh (and cheap)

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virginia@sfbg.com

APPETITE Trekking around the Bay for what is not at all elusive — excellent food — is ever a pleasure. Finding it on the cheap? Options are endless. Sandwiches stand as one of the easiest ways to fill up for less, making the continued glut of sandwich openings unsurprising. (Check out the Richmond’s new Chomp n’ Swig — hard to top the Bacon Butter Crunch sandwich: white cheddar, tomato, bits of bacon, guacamole. Or in the Mission, the Galley inside Clooney’s Pub at 1401 Valencia serves a meaty French Onion sandwich, yes, like the soup and oh so good.) Beyond mere sandwiches, here are some other affordable delights.

 

MARKET AND RYE

 

West Portal is lucky to claim new Market and Rye, from Top Chef alum Ryan Scott. What could be just another sandwich shop is instead an airy, high-ceilinged cafe in yellows and whites under skylights. Salted rye bread is made specifically for the spot by North Beach’s classic Italian French Baking Company (IFBC’s sourdough and wheat bread choices are also available).

Sandwiches ($8.50–9) offer enough playful touches to keep them unique, like Funyuns on roast beef or Cool Ranch Doritos adding crunch to chicken salad layered with avocado spread and pepper jack. I took to the Reuben chicken meatball sandwich on salted rye, its generous contents falling out all over the place, overflowing with 1000 Island dressing, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, red cabbage caraway slaw, and house chicken meatballs. I almost didn’t miss the corned beef.

Build-your-own-salads offer healthy alternatives, while above average sides ($4 per scoop, $7.50 2 scoops, $10.50 3 scoops) are generous helpings of the likes of roasted zucchini tossed with cherry tomatoes and boccaccini (mini mozzarella balls), enlivened by mint vinaigrette. The side that didn’t work for me was grilled broccoli. It appeared green and verdant, dotted with ricotta and walnuts in red wine dressing, but was so cold, its flavor was stunted.

Housemade root beer float “Twinkies” ($3.50) are a fun finish, though Twinkie-lovers be aware: these are dense, dark cakes filled with a dreamy root beer float cream, neither fluffy nor spongy.

68 West Portal Ave., SF. (415) 564-5950

 

ALL GOOD PIZZA

A jaunt to Jerrold and Third Street leads to a food truck parked in a Bayview oasis: a parking lot filled with picnic tables, potted cacti, and herbs used for cooking. All Good Pizza — open weekdays only: 10am-2pm — just launched this month from neighborhood locals desiring healthy food and “good, sincere pizza,” with a real commitment to the area (check out the site’s community page).

The lot invites lingering over cracker-thin pizzas (a steal at $7), from a basic Margherita to a spicy pie dotted with peppers, fennel, mozzarella, and Louisiana hot links smoked on site. The trailer houses a 650 degree gas-fired oven. These aren’t game-changing pies but there’s nothing like it in the ‘hood — nor are there many healthy salads, like a kale, radicchio, sweet potato crisps, Parmesan, balsamic reserva combo. There are also panini sandwiches ($7) such as a pig-heavy, super salty Nola Muffaletta: Genoa salami, smoked ham, olive salad, fior di latte mozzarella, and provolone cheese.

Italian sodas ($2.50) are all made on premises, like a candy sweet coconut soda evoking coconut oil, beaches and vacation. All this in a Bayview parking lot.

1605 Jerrold Ave., SF. (415) 846-6960, www.allgoodpizza.com

 

ANDA PIROSHKI

A close childhood pal is Russian and her mother and grandmother often home-baked us unforgettable treats as kids, from blintzes to piroshkis, those little baked buns stuffed with goodness. I still dream of them — a rarity in this town. Not even in Chicago or NY have I tasted any piroshkis as fresh as those at Anda Piroshki, a stall in the tiny but idyllic 331 Cortland marketplace housing a few take-out food purveyors. I’ve eaten Anda at SF Street Food Fest, but the ideal is to arrive at 331 soon after it opens when piroshkis are pulled from the oven piping hot.

The dough is airy yet dense, ever-so-subtly sweet, like a glorified Hawaiian roll. No skimping on fillings — one piroshki ($3.75–4.50) fills me up. Sustainable meats and local ingredients make them relatively guilt-free. Try a button mushroom piroshki overflowing with fresh spinach, or one of ground beef, rice and Swiss, oozing comfort. My favorite is Atlantic smoked salmon and cream cheese accented by black pepper and dill. It makes a savory, creamy breakfast.

The one downside has been a straight-faced, disinterested server who could not be bothered as I asked a question about Russian sodas (like Kvass, a fermented rye soda — pleasing rye notes if too saccharine) and acted the same when I returned a second time… a stark contrast to the friendliness I encounter at every other 331 business. But momentary coldness is still worth those warm piroshkis.

331 Cortland Ave., SF. (415) 271-9055, www.andapiroshki.com

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Food cart captures: Snaps from the Street Food Festival

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We still had five blocks to walk, but we could already smell the medley of exotic flavors wafting up the street. Sam Love and I were headed to the third annual SF Street Food Festival, which took over blocks and blocks of Folsom Street this past Saturday, bringing together street food vendors from La Cocina, San Francisco, and even a few from across the country to share edible wares with local foodies.

Signs lined the street, warning us to “pace yourself.” This was no joke. It was hard to decide where to start, but we chose to stick with the stars of the event: the entrepreneurial women of La Cocina. When we finally picked a vendor line to wait in, some of were snaking half way down the block.

We started with some tamales from Alicia’s Tamales Los Mayas. They were creamy and delicate, and as Alicia put it with a huge smile on her face, “stuffed with love.” We could have eaten a whole suitcase full of those babies. Yum!

Then we moved on to a more tactile eating experience, stopping at Eji’s Ethiopian Gourmet for some spongy injera topped with lentils and cabbage. Using the bread as utensil, we scooped the perfectly spiced veggies up, letting them drip satisfyingly down our chins.

After a pit stop for some agua fresca, we made one more beeline to Los Cilantos, to grab an elote (how had I never had one of these before!), which is roasted corn on the cob, smothered in mayo and parmesan cheese. So good. So good!

I have no idea how many zillions of people showed up for the festival on Saturday, but I do know that everyone at the stands was working their butts off to make sure no one went home hungry.

 

Sweet streets: Gelatin dessert art at this weekend’s Street Food Festival

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As the foodie masses descend on the Mission for Sat/20’s Street Food Festival, they’ll be met with a diverse representation of what San Francisco eats. In this corner, fancy brick and mortar spots: Slanted Door, 15 Romolo, and Rye are but a few representatives of the eateries that are taking grills and spatulas into the fresh air this weekend. But for sheer culinary comeliness, the big guys have a serious contender when it comes to Sweets Collection arty gelatin creations. 

Graduates of the La Cocina street food incubator program will total a solid 50 percent of the 60 vendors in attendance at the festival. The varying styles of food preparation are meant to express the breadth of eats in San Francisco, but also to reinforce the fact that the huarache you buy at your local farmer’s market has the culinary chops to stand up against many places that take Visa.

According to the website, in a perfect world the festival would “get rid of all the white tents, and just do it block party style, but that’s not so cool with the Health Department, so you will have to imagine it with us.”

Rosa Rodriguez would surely be invited if the fest turned into a block party. She lives in the Mission, and has been creating her Sweets Collection intricate gelatin creations, in which graceful flowers bloom in edible gel, for a year now. We mentioned certain circumstances under which her treats might prove particularly awesome in the paper today, and here’s more on Rodriguez from an email interview we conducted with her last week. (You can also check out food writer Virginia Miller’s adventuresome picks for the fest here.) 

Sweets Collection got its name when Rodriguez realized her treats wouldn’t look amiss in an art gallery

SFBG: Tell us a little about yourself. How did you start Sweets Collection?

RR: My name is Rosa Rodriguez, I have two children, one is 15 years old and named Dayra, and Hasam is eight years old, we are from Durango, Mexico. I’m a single mother. When we are not doing artistic desserts, my children go to school and I take English classes and work on my business. I became unemployed in 2009, and in 2010 I had the idea of starting my own business to cover household expenses and share the art of my greatest passions.

 

SFBG: Can you tell us a little about gelatin art?

RR: Arte floral en gelatina has become a centerpiece of Mexican culture. Evening parties in Cancun often have intricate gelatin dessert flowers served in glass, personalized gelatin desserts are in demand at corporate events in Mexico, and no birthday is complete without fun gelatin designs on the cake.  

 

SFBG: Most of your work I’ve seen is of flowers. Do you do any other kinds of designs?

RR: I am fascinated by flowers, but do figures, characters or any design. You can get your favorite hobby, movie, or fantasy adventure in a gelatin dessert.

 

SFBG: What are you bringing to the Street Food Festival this weekend?

RR: Sweets Collection will participate by offering fanciful jello shots at two bars that will be located on Folsom and 23rd streets. But we also have a booth on that intersection, selling designs that the entire family can enjoy. Last year was my first year, like me, many people were impressed by the art to gelatin and I hope that this year more people came by our Booth , to know and taste the art you can eat.

 

SFBG: What does it taste like?

RR: This artistic dessert is made with passion. They’re handcrafted and they taste how they look… delicious.

 

San Francisco Street Food Festival

Sat/20 11 a.m.- 7 p.m., free

Folsom between 22nd and 26th sts. and surrounding area, SF

www.sfstreetfoodfest.com

Munchies

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HERBWISE There will be things at this weekend’s Street Food Festival that you will want to eat. Oh yes, very much so. And damn if there won’t be things that you will want to look at — and then eat.

One of these things will be Rosa Rodriguez’ Sweets Collection gelatin desserts: small, sweet cups in which three dimensional flowers bloom, taunting you to stick a spoon in them. I will take them over designer cupcakes any day.

Rodriguez, who now lives in the Mission with her two daughters, is from the Mexican state of Durango. There, large gelatin molds traditionally bloom at birthdays, baby showers, and wedding parties; red roses and yellow zinnias made of condensed milk curling prettily around the faces of happy couples and beaming little girls. When I asked her via email about her San Francisco customers’ most common reaction to her wares, she said it is uncertainty. “They ask if they can eat the flower, or if it’s plastic.”

A La Cocina street food incubator program graduate, Rodriguez will be in the heart of the Mission this Saturday, along with the rest of the sweet and savory offerings of the Street Food Festival’s 60-some vendors. She’ll be selling “fanciful jellos shots” at the festival’s bars on 23rd and Folsom streets, and her more family-friendly concoctions at a stand of her own on the same intersection.

Saturday will entail a lot of eating, and a lot of gawking at fanciful jello shots, and for these reasons alone the day will go very well if you are really, really stoned.

But ingesting marijuana before the Street Food Festival is a delicate matter. After all, the third year of the event will be the biggest yet, its girth spanning eight blocks of Folsom Street, plus parts of 23rd, 25th, the Cesar Chavez Elementary School parking lot, and the Parque de los Niños Unidos.

In past years, massive crowds have marred the day for many an avid snacker — the lines, my friend, the lines. This year La Cocina is hopeful that the vast expansion of the event will stem the tide — but nonetheless it would not do to have agoraphobia derail you just as you are reaching the front of the line at the Kasa booth.

Luckily, there are plenty of San Francisco souls that geek out tailor-making THC regimens for situations like these. I placed a call to one such place humans like this congregate: the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, winningly acronym-ed SPARC. It just received our Best of the Bay reader’s poll award for Best Cannabis Club and it’s well known for having an extensive selection of in-house strains. It seemed like a fine place to start out.

Nick Smilgys, who has served as the club’s marketing director for over a year now, had two words for me: blackberry kush. Then he had some more. The kush — which he says is traditionally cultivated in Pakistan and India, but happens to be one of SPARC’s signature strains — is a deep-green indica that’ll make you hungry as hell, ready to take on all those Indian burritos and handmade huaraches.

Smilgys says the blackberry buds create “good well being” in their ingester, and result in a nice body high. Of course, he cautions, medicines will have differing effects on different patients.

But if you’re not careful with the blackberry, it could keep you from your improbably edible jello flowers. (Smilgys employed the term “couch lock” to describe a potential blackberry kush effect.) If you’re prone to getting paranoid, he counsels medical marijuana patients to look for a sativa-indica hybrid that tilts to the indica side of things for a more tranquil, crowd-ready high.

Be brave friends, eat the flower. *

STREET FOOD FESTIVAL

Sat/20 11 a.m.-7 p.m., free

Folsom between 22nd and 26th sts. and surrounding area, SF

www.sfstreetfoodfest.com

 

Appetite: A mouthwatering preview of the SF Street Food Festival

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La Cocina‘s SF Street Food Festival keeps getting bigger each year. Gearing up for this Saturday’s (8/20) third annual street food extravaganza, prepare for a takeover of numerous Mission blocks (free admission, with food for purchase under $8). This year there was an early sneak peek for media and select guests. There will be much to love at this year’s festival. Many food truck and street food favorites return, plus Ferry Plaza stars like Namu. Just a few stand-outs the new-to-this-year front:

Wax moth larvae tacos from Don Bugito – These pretty, little tacos are laden with crispy larvae, garlic, pasilla chiles, and pickled onions. Some popped them in their mouths without realizing what they were, others turned away once they heard… but to taste them is to be converted. No need to fear bugs in the hands of owner, Monica Martinez. Plus, it’s a great conversation starter.

15 Romolo’s jambalini – I’ve been touting 15 Romolo since day one. One of our city’s best bars is also home to some of the best bar food (just try their Challah at ‘Cha Boy, Nutella lathered on challah bread with fried bananas, bacon, and pickles!) The jambalini (jambalaya croquettes) are fried balls in the style of Italian arancini, with a Creole aioli for dipping. This has been a top bite at the bar for years. Thankfully, it’s also at this year’s Street Food Fest.

Rye on the Road’s Lawrenceburg swizzle & spicy paloma – You’d want Rye on the Road at any party. The experts behind beloved bars 15 Romolo and Rye are handling the bars at Street Food Fest. Watch for the snow cone-like fun of a lawrenceburg swizzle: Wild Turkey 101, maple syrup, lemon, Creole bitters, garnished with mint. Or go for a little heat with a spicy paloma: tequila, grapefruit juice, jalapeno syrup, salt.

Azalina’s Malaysian bites
Azalina‘s fills the far too vacant Malaysian food gap with a few Malaysian items, including a creamy, savory coconut chicken curry on green onion buns, perked up with spice, cut with blueberry cucumber pickles.

For the first time, there will also be six mobile vendors from across the country: The Peached Tortilla (Austin), The Arepa Lady (New York), Big-Ass Sandwiches (Portland), Skillet Street Food (Seattle), La Cocina grads Global Soul (Los Angeles), Ingrid’s Lunch Box (Madison).

Passports ($50-$250) offer discounts on food and eliminate cash purchases or you can just stop by for a couple individual bites.

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On the Cheap Listings

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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 18

“El Grito de la Mission” Southern Exposure, 3030 20th St., SF; (415) 863-2141. 6pm, free. Join Southern Exposures and the youth, artists, and community partners who participated in the Mission Voices Summer program for a final exhibition featuring new work, installations, interactive performance, food, and refreshments.

Hear It Local 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF; (415) 974-1719. 6:30pm, free. Celebrate the San Francisco launch of www.hearitlocal.com, which provides a community-building platform for the local, independent music scene. Featuring performances by the Nice Guy Trio, Quinn Deveaux, and Kelly MacFarling, a music photography exhibit by Niall David and Audra Marie Dewitt, and more.

NASA Space Telescope Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF; (415) 554-9600. 7:30pm, free. Astrophysicist Bryan Mendez will tell all there is to know about NASA’s new Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope, launched unmanned in 2009 to search for asteroids, stars, the origins of stellar and planetary systems, and anything else the galaxies could reveal.

THURSDAY 19

Chrome Chrome Retail, 580 4th St., SF; (415) 820-5070. Noon, free. All Chrome products will be 30% off all day while all proceeds from the Noon-3 BBQ and the 4pm-8pm dollar beer happy hour will benefit the San Francisco Bike Kitchen.

Drunken Dish Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin, SF; (415) 581-3500. 5pm, $10. Head to this month’s installment of Matcha, the Asian Art Museum’s monthly late night discounted party, for a talk and demonstration on Shanghai cuisine, specifically, how to make drunken chicken. Also featuring special gallery tours, cocktails, DJ music, and more.

Jaws Hyde Street Pier, 2905 Hyde, SF; (415) 561-6662. 7:30pm, $5 suggested donation. If you thought Jaws was frightening to watch on land, see if you can survive watching it on the Eureka, “the longest floating wooden ship on Earth.” Part of the San Francisco Maritime Nat’l Park Association’s film series to raise money to benefit their education and preservation programs.

“Persistent Voices” Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF; (415) 581-1600. 8pm, free. Inspired by the anthology, Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, poets will read and perform works from the anthology in addition to some new pieces inspired by the book. Featured readers include Judy Grahn, Kevin Killian on Steve Abbott, Jaime Cortez, Thandiwe Thomas, and more.

SF Jazz Summerfest Union Square, Geary at Powell, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 6pm, free. Heat up your foggy summer blues with a free jazz concert in the park with Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, known for performing classic jazz and blues mixed with big band, salsa grooves.

SATURDAY 21

Dahlias Hall of Flowers, 9th Ave. at Lincoln, SF; (415) 994-2448. Sat. 10am-5pm, Sun. 10am-4pm; free. Did you know that the Dahlia is San Francisco’s official flower? The Dahlia Society of California, responsible for the planting and upkeep of Golden Gate Park’s Dahlia Dell, is holding it’s annual show and exhibition of these fantastic flowers.

Hello Kitty Must Die San Francisco Public Library, Chinatown branch, 1135 Powell, SF; (415) 355-2888. 2:30pm, free. Hear author Angela S. Choi read from and discuss her new book, that rips into stereotypes about the well-groomed, well-behaved Asian wife with a tale about a serial killer happy to teach others how to get rid of unwanted fiancés and bosses.

Hot Glass Cold Beer Public Glass, 1750 Armstrong, SF; (415) 671-4916. 6pm; $25 donation, includes glass and beer. Take in an evening of glassblowing demonstrations by artists Paul DeSomma, Marsha Blaker, and Jeff Rogers while listening to live music and enjoying cold beer in your new one-of-a-kind, hand blown drinking glass.

SF Street Food Fest Folsom between 25th and 26th St., SF; (415) 824-2729 ext. 303. 11am-7pm, free. Enjoy some casual, affordable, delicious food made by San Francisco food entrepreneurs. Hosted by La Cocina, this Street Food Festival aims to further advocate for the creation of policies that support the formalization of mobile food vending to connect communities to a food from all classes and cultures.

BAY AREA

Art and Soul Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, City Center, 14th St. and Broadway, Oakl.; (510) 444-CITY. Sat.-Sun. noon-6pm, $10. Celebrate the past, present and future music of Oakland at this two-day concert and marketplace featuring music performances by Cake, En Vogue, Tony! Toni! Toné!, MC Hammer, Pete Escovedo, The Bittersweets, Lenny Williams, and more. Also featuring an Artisan Marketplace, with crafts and art for purchase, food vendors offering multicultural menus, dance performances, and activities.

SUNDAY 22

Sunday Streets John F. Kennedy Drive and MLK Drive, Golden Gate Park, SF; Great Highway from Lincoln to SF Zoo, SF; www. sundaystreetssf.com. 10am-3pm, free. Take to the streets for a day of healthy, family-friendly activities. This month’s street closure is “Penguins to penguins,” or Golden Gate Park to the SF Zoo.

TUESDAY 24

“Microscopic Giant” Space Gallery, 1141 Polk, SF; www.bucktoothmechanics.blogspot.com. 8pm, free. A night of local creativity with spoken word performances, storytelling, and poetry by Tracy Jones, April Wolfe, Steven Gray, Charlie Getter, and the host of NPR’s Snap Judgment Glynn Washington, open mic, live painting by artists Aaron Lawrence, Nolan Yelonek, and Noa- , and live music by DigDug.