Street Food Thuggery

Yay, civilization! Several friends emailed me about the Los Angeles Street Food Festival that occurred this past Saturday. With the explosion of gourmet food trucks – gourmet fries, gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, gourmet sundaes, etc. – it promised to be an exciting and trendy occasion. I had a friend visiting from out of town so I purchased us VIP tickets, which meant that we could enter all civilized-like through glass doors as opposed to a cyclone fence gate and use flush toilets instead of Port-O-Lets.

I picked up my friend, Steve, who did not have VIP tickets, but we stupidly figured it wouldn’t be a huge deal. As we neared the venue a few minutes after the event started, we started to worry as teams of hipsters swarmed in the same direction while sizable numbers of disappointed, but sensible looking people headed in the opposite direction. We found the VIP entrance first, a line 60-people deep and moving slowly. I waited there while Steve went to scout the loser line, but given the mobs of people, we figured it wasn’t likely he would make it inside before dinner time.

While I was waiting, I thought about why I was there. People told me, “I’m sure you’ve tried most of the food trucks already,” to which I laughed humbly and looked down at my feet. But the truth is, I haven’t tried any of them. O.K., awhile ago, someone brought me a plate from the Kogi truck, which started the whole craze in L.A., but they weren’t even at this event. If I were a 23-year-old out partying and needed a food fix, I might have made the rounds, but I’m not. I’m an old fart who likes to eat with metal flatware while sitting down. I like tables and napkins and not waiting in lines.

The other thing is, I can’t imagine that the food is that great. How can the slice truck produce pizza that is better than out of a wood burning oven at Mozza or Bollini’s? Putting kimchi on your cheese fries doesn’t instantly make them better. This isn’t to say that they’re not making good food, but I don’t want to wait in several lines in the sweltering February sun (um, yeah. It was really hot) to find out if I’m right or wrong.

But the biggest issue I have is that these cupcake/crepe/Asian-Latin fusion trucks don’t represent actual L.A. street food. I admit that’s a condescending thing to say and, in fact, they did have two Mexican food trucks at the fair, but neither of them represented the taco trucks from my life. For that, I recommend Daily Taco, which has a comprehensive review library of local taco trucks and I couldn’t find reviews of the two that were at the fest.

So when Steve reported back that it would be a 2-hour wait (two goddamned hours!) for the non-VIP ers to get in, I suggested that we abandon the lines and get some real food. I handed my tickets off to some friends I ran into and we went to Boyle Heights for some birria – stewed goat.

The restaurant was perfect: booths, beer, and an oral menu consisting of birria, quesadillas and cabeza tacos (made from cheek meat). That’s it. The goat was almost as delicious as the homemade corn tortillas and we were sitting down in Naugahyde booths, not like Neanderthals walking around eating out of flimsy cardboard trays. Sadly, a hungover Steve did not enjoy the talented table-side Mariachis as much as the rest of the clientele, but he enjoyed the meal otherwise.

Afterwards we visited El Mercado de Los Angeles, a three-story marketplace where you can buy everything from Disney knock-off toys to cowboy boots to exotic culinary ingredients. I got the stink eye when I took this delicious photo. Unfortunately, the vendors didn’t care for me taking pictures so I only have a few, but the moles looked just as delicious as the toys looked creepy.

Again, for some reason I got the stink eye when I took this photo. I appreciate that a sorbet truck arriving outside a night club at 1:30AM has a certain mystique but to me, a bakery that sells heart-shaped loaves of bread for Valentine’s Day has way more street cred. Can you feel the love? I'm interested to know what food trucks readers would like to see on their street. Thoughts?