Imagine there’s a place you could go and pay a one time admission fee, and enjoy some of the best food, beer, and cocktails that Los Angeles has to offer. Well here’s the good news, IT DOES EXIST!
It’s called the LA Street Food Fest, where 60 bucks gets you all you can eat ($90 if you want V.I.P. treatment). Okay, I know, $60 seems like a lot, but let’s be real. This general admission fee gave me access to free food from nearly 150 food and beverage vendors. You can go out to a bar and spend $60 easily on drinks and apps (appetizers, not life sucking smartphone applications) and still be ready to drop more on after hour tacos at the end of the night. At the LA Street Food Fest, you pay once, and then eat and drink until your heart’s content… and then eat and drink some more.
The festivities went down this past weekend on Saturday, June 11th at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. If you purchased the V.I.P. tickets, you were able to enter at 3pm otherwise, general admission was at 5pm. In anticipation of a long line to enter, I arrived at the event around 4:15pm and was able to secure a spot towards the front of the general admission line which was awesome because 5 minutes later, I turned around and the line was spilling over well into the parking lot. While waiting in the line, the crowd was greeted by a British guy who I’m guessing was some sort of event coordinator. He seemed like a charming guy who managed to squeeze out a few funny jokes about the differences among Americans and British people while briefing the crow on entrance protocol.
The gates open promptly at 5pm and we were greeted with dessert vendors first. My favorite dessert was some Vanilla Ice Cream I had from this vendor call Three Twins Ice Cream. They pride themselves on being an organic ice cream vendor and that made me a bit skeptical at first, but clearly won me over after the first bite. In my opinion, it’s not the same tasty experience when I eat things like organic, gluten free, sugar free, “what’s the point” desserts. If I’m choosing to indulge in sweets, I’m gonna go hard. If I wanted the so called “better” option, I’d eat a salad instead.
Getting back on track, after dessert came the Asian cuisine section where you could find dumplings, ramen, and rice dishes galore! Also, intermittently placed throughout the entire festival were the beer stands. After a long day of fasting in preparation, and standing in the sun waiting to enter, I wanted nothing more than an ice cold beer. The first vendor my eyes landed on was the Singha beer tent and it was every bit of refreshing. Following the Asian cusine section was American then Latin cuisine. Some of my favorite vendors in those section were the L.A. Wing Co. and Pinches Tacos and Goose Island Beer. I’m sure I have more favorites but there was so much good food! For a more complete list of vendors, you can checkout the LA Street Food Fest website.
I can’t forget my favorite part of the festival: Once I had a full tray of food (yes they gave out trays) I was able to set foot on the field of the renowned Rose Bowl Stadium and enjoy my food while sitting down in the shade. At the end of the day, I had the ultimate case of the itis and could barely make it back to the car, but it was all worth it! I don’t know of any other event that you can experience LA food like that and I encourage you all to check it out next year.
Until then,
Eat Well, Live Well Yall,
- Curnie Compton
