For a city that's only recently become street-food friendly, San Francisco's nonprofit La Cocina has helped the city put together a great lineup of vendors and restaurants for its inaugural Street Food Festival this Saturday August 22. Admission to the festival is free, and food and beer will be on sale.
The SFSFF, for short, pairs street vendor offerings alongside those of established chefs like Aziza's Mourad Lahlou and Absinthe's Jamie Lauren, to name a couple notables. Each booth offers a items in a bite, a beverage and a forks and fingers category, with food costing $3 per bite and $8 per larger taste.
The full list is over at the SFSFF website, but the participating La Cocina vendors include:
Chaac Mool - Yucatecan food
El Huarache Loco - Mexican food
El Buen Comer - Mexican food
Endless Summer Sweets
Zella's Soulful Kitchen - southern food
The nonprofit kitchen La Cocina offers kitchen space and equipment to food entrepreneurs, with an eye assisting toward immigrant women by offering low-cost kitchen space, volunteers and other assistance.
Missing from the SFSFF, it appears, is any sort of actual street food presence. Sure, these vendors sell their wares and they don't have restaurants, but many participate in farmers markets or sell to neighborhood marts. I wonder if the Mission street food carts will have the guts to hawk their wares at (or just outside) the SFSFF.
While this year's event seems more of a La Cocina-established chef mashup, the SFSFF does hope to promote awareness of the difficult regulations surrounding legal street vendor permits in SF. Their site has some very good information on the present and future of the street food movement, and hopefully they'll find a platform at the festival to educate eaters on the street food debate.
San Francisco Street Food Festival August 22, 2009 11 am - 7 pm Folsom between 25th and 26th
Comments
Hi Lindsey! I'm in our kitchen right now, getting ready for this event. For the moment, the vendors in here include Estrellita's Snacks, who began selling on the streets, El Buen Comer, who began selling from her home, a bacon-wrapped hot dog vendor who sells normally on the street and WholesomeBakery. Also at the festival will be Crembe Brulee Cart and Urban Nectar along with fruit vendors and other informal vendors.
We love the vibrant nature of food in San Francisco, and are so thrilled to be able to have an event like this. There will, in fact, be nine vendors, many of whom began selling as mobile vendors and made the decision to formalize their food businesses despite the often tough regulations around formalization.
Thank you so much for your interest, and we look forward to seeing you on Saturday.
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