I Cart Street Food

Street food fanatics descended upon the Mission on Saturday for the San Francisco Street Food Festival 2009, a day-long block party presented by La Cocina.

SF Street Food Festival: If you grill it, they will come.

With free admission and food/drink costing no more than $8, well over 5,000 eaters of all ages came out to celebrate SF’s vibrant street food community.

The Hungry Masses

The sheer numbers that turned out was a tad overwhelming, but it was also heart-warming to see what good eaters we have here in SF. Lines snaked up and down the block, but surprisingly, the crowd seemed to be generally good-humored and calm (unlike the foaming-at-the-mouth angries at the Great American Food Fest a few months back).

Patience was handsomely rewarded, and street food, glorious street food, was consumed.

Elotes (Grilled Corn) from Los Cilantros

Anticuchos Chilenos (Marinated New York Strip and Beef Heart with Peppers & Onions) and Mushroom/Spinach Empanada from Sabores Del Sur

House-made Hot Dogs with Guinness Mustard and Chili Ketchup from Absinthe

Lavendar Crème Brulee from the Crème Brulee Cart

I braved the Aziza line and although their Squid Salad with maras pepper, preserved lemon, cabbage, mint and cilantro ($3) was sold out by the time I got to order, I was nicely satiated by the huge Moroccan "Taco" ($8) Chef Mourad Lahlou was serving up. The beverage pairing of iced Sweet Mint Tea hit the spot and cooled off the heat from the taco's harissa.

Moroccan "Taco": Flatbread with Summer Squash, Harissa, and Yogurt Sauce from Aziza

For dessert, I followed the scent of sugar and fried dough to Endless Summer Sweets’ Funnel Cake with sweet strawberries and cream. If there was any question on whether the line was worth it, my doubts vanished as I saw satisfied customers milling about with showers of powdered sugar on their arms and traces of whipped cream on their faces.

Funnel Cake with Strawberries and Cream from Endless Summer Sweets

Gnom

Gnom gnom

Curb-side Dining

The beauty of the street food fest was the greater vision of the event. For those who are unfamiliar with La Cocina, it is a phenomenal non-profit organization that acts as a food business incubator for low-income and immigrant entrepreneurs looking to start their own food business. The SF Street Food Festival brought people together, across the spectrum of class and culture, to celebrate in the everyday food that we all eat and love.

SF Street Food Festival 2009

Leading up to the festival was an amazingly fun and well-orchestrated Scavenger Hunt that had 224 teams roaming the city in search of delicious street eats, and generally assaulting San Francisco’s finest street vendors with their wit and creativity.

Really, it was no joke. Teams like Fatty Boomblatty and Trans-Fatso’s rapped to the Crème Brulee Cart Man…

Miso Horny did a funky chicken dance (in public) for the Roli Roti folks…

And I wasn't above setting up an all out photo shoot at Bloodhound in the name of movie poster perfection with team Lick My Spoon.

Oh, San Francisco. You are so special.

Team "Soup Sluts"

Here is a photo slideshow from the San Francisco Street Food Festival 2009 that took place Saturday Aug 22, 2009 in the Mission District. The event was a benefit for the non-profit La Cocina.

photos by Wendy Goodfriend

Recap of the Event: SF Street Food Fanatics Unite
Lick My Spoon recaps the Street Food Scavenger Hunt
Listen to KQED's Forum program on Street Food and find out about pavement cuisine resources and events.

Food stirs up powerful emotions. It's not so much the "what" as it is the "how" that sometimes seems to be the problem. Accessibility, artisanal, affordability, authenticity, sustainability, these are some of the buzz words of the day and each one of them are loaded. One organization making an impact person by person and bite by bite, and seemingly free from any controversy, is La Cocina.

La Cocina is an "incubator kitchen," but really, it's so much more. La Cocina serves low-income entrepreneurs launching, formalizing or expanding their food businesses by providing affordable commercial kitchen space and industry-specific assistance in order to bring their businesses quickly to a point of self-sufficiency. These businesses are often very impressive ones, making wonderful food by hand. Some of my personal favorites are the Mexican snacks or antojitos and agua frescas at El Huarache Loco that I find at the Alemany Farmer's Market, Clairessquares flapjacks that I devour every time I go to the Kabuki Sundance Theater and CMB Sweets addictive apricot jam (I like it even better than some of the more well-known cult brands). I am also crazy about Los Pastores, the Mexican restaurant that serves what has to be the best mole in town.

The organization also sponsors fund-raising classes open to the public. There have been cocktail classes, cooking classes and on September 24th there will be a class on on The Magic of Mole Uncovered, taught by the cook and owner of Los Pastores, Irma Calderon. On September 12th, you can get a first hand look and taste, at La Cocina.

What: A Taste of La Cocina Taste, drink and shop at San Francisco's incubator kitchen.

Where: 2948 Folsom St, San Francisco

When: 6 - 8 pm, September 12th, 2008

How: $5 entrance fee, pay at the door

One sip is all it took to hook me. Intent on feeding my caramel fixation one recent morning, I stopped by the La Cocina stall at the Ferry Plaza farmers' market for some alfajores. As I made my purchase, culinary director Jason Rose handed me a miniature paper cup filled with steaming Morning Glory Chai.

Cue the (food) porn soundtrack: boom-chicka-bow-wow chicka-bow-wow. The chai was spicy with a soupçon of exotic sweetness, and almost unbearably creamy. It was, hands down, the best chai I've ever tasted. I had to learn more.

Chai means tea in several languages, including Turkish and Russian, but it also refers to the intoxicating blend of warm milk, black tea, and aromatic Indian spices that has become a familiar drink on coffee shop menus. Most chais incorporate cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, freshly grated nutmeg, and pepper into the mix; Morning Glory adds all of those, as well as less common seasonings like vanilla bean, coriander, and orange peel. But what really sets Morning Glory apart is the inclusion of Chinese herbs, which give new meaning to the term "pick me up."

According to Laura Smailes, a certified clinical herbalist and the San Francisco manufacturer of Morning Glory Chai, there is astragulus to build the immune system and galangal to increase circulation. Gotu kola is good for the brain and, in conjunction with ginkgo, adds oxygen to the blood. Foti is added for longevity. "The Chinese say it will keep your hair black," she explains.

The Morning Glory Chai recipe dates back 12 years, when Seattle-based herbalist Jessica Vidica-Neisus brewed the first cup. "She chose herbs that were safe for anyone to use. There are no contraindications in these small doses. It's a way to get medicine into a tasty beverage." Put simply: "It increases circulation, brain function, and digestion."

Laura and Jessica met while Laura was apprenticing at an herbal apothecary and working at the Chai House in Seattle. When she moved to San Francisco to study ayurvedic medicine, she was looking for a way to support herself.

"I realized there was no good chai in San Francisco," Laura says. "I started the chai business to put myself through school." Two and a half years later, her chai is served at places like Farley's, Ritual Coffee Roasters, and Bi-Rite Creamery, where it is incorporated into a hot drinking chocolate.

Laura makes each batch by hand. She starts by filling a 30-gallon pot with filtered water. Once it's boiling, she simmers the herbs and spices for 45 minutes, then removes them and adds fair-trade black tea and ginkgo. Finally she adds honey, vanilla, and organic maple syrup to sweeten the chai. (A decaf version is brewed without tea.)

Laura's use of natural sweeteners means the chai is safe drinking for people with blood sugar problems such as hypoglycemia. It's also dairy-free, which gives people a choice of how to drink it. "It's traditionally drunk with steamed milk in India," Laura says. But some people prefer it straight up.

And the name? It is named for a flower known to induce an alternate state of consciousness. As Laura says, "It's the tea of dreams."

To brew at home: Combine equal parts chai and milk. Drink cold, or steam and serve hot. Once open, refrigerate and consume within three weeks. Refrigerate decaf chai immediately, whether open or not.

Available at Brickhouse Café & Bar, Farley's, MotoJava, Ritual Coffee Roasters. Also available in half-gallon jugs ($11) at Ferry Plaza & Alemany farmers' markets.