Strawberry Fest! 2009

We kicked off summer and its lineup of food festivals with the Strawberry Fest in Oxnard (and, hey, it's right by the outlet stores ...). I went with some friends including former roomie turned fellow blogger Kat's 9 Lives.

Various food and arts stalls abound, including your typical festival foods such as corn on the cob, smoked turkey leg (which was delicious, btw), and even some chains that surprised me like Jamba Juice.


And of course, there were tons of strawberry-related food and drinks, including strawberry beer/wine, strawberry lemonade, and strawberry crepe shown below:
This was a pretty good and heavy duty crepe! Filled not just with fresh, sweet, strawberries but topped with chocolate whipped cream and powdered sugar! We're definitely not counting calories here.

Choclate-dipped strawberries were not cheap at about $2 each (or $10 for 6) but those big strawberries looked good so we got some that were made by this temple organization.


Umm, delicious, juicy, sweet strawberries covered in good, dark chocolate.
Let's take another look :P


No festival is complete without funnel cakes. There was only one funnel cake vendor, which was operated by a local high school, so we got in the long line and got one to share.

The funnel cake had perfect thickness such that it had a crispy fried outer layer but moist dough inside. The syruped strawberries were so-so and lacking in quantity -- the funnel cake with just powdered sugar was already so delicious, but just wished we hadn't paid extra for the strawberries.

Naturally we can't go home without buying at least a flat of strawberries to take home! We saw two farms selling fresh strawberries right next to each other. One had strawberries that are bigger and juicier, but the other had ones that are sweeter.

Oh, the decisions ... we bought 3 flats to take home :P

I Want Me Tamales

This past weekend was the 4th Annual International Tamale Festival, held right by MacArthur Park/Mama's Hot Tamales in LA. The event was free and street parking wasn't too bad around the park.

The festival offered, besides tamales of course, various Mexican eats like Tortas, Platanos, and drinks like horchata and aguas frescas. I was obviously there for the tamales though. I had hopes for a blue corn tamale, but that didn't happen so I just got what I could.
Mama's International Tamales had some of the most interesting and varied offerings there. Pictured below are the beef adobo and the chicken mole tamales.Both were great! I really liked the beef adobo a lot, although it was pretty spicy. Drank 1/2 bottle of water but it was worth it. The chicken mole was not spicy at all but was also very good. I thought it was really messy as a tamale, but the taste of the corn tamale + mole sauce definitely worked.

Another interesting vendor was the White Girl Tamale Maker (aka La Guera Tamalera), which boasts authentic VeraCruz style (I don't know what that would be like, so I can't attest to that). Sounds weird? It also happens to be the only organic offering and also had very interesting sweet tamales creation.

Pictured below we had the chicken with green chile (left), and on the right was the fig-nana and also the ginger peach tamales.
The chicken w/ green chile was delicious and it might actually be my favorite of the day. Maybe. With a tastier corn, the tamale was also not that spicy, which suits me just fine since it was still very flavorful. The fig-nana and peach tamales were very sweet. They were tasty, but funny thing is that eating the peach tamale reminds me basically of peach cobbler of sorts.
These organic tamales were $5 each, compared to $3 tamales from everywhere else.

Overall a great lunch on a Saturday evening, followed by a short walk through the park (to the car). Will definitely return next year!

http://www.eastlosangeles.net/tamalefestival/

October Food Events

**UPDATED**

September was packed with food festivals and events. October's slowing down some, but still busy busy ...

Now-Oct 26. Torrance's Oktoberfest. Alpine Village, 833 W. Torrance Blvd., Torrance, CA 90502, 310-327-4384.
Saturday, Oct 4. 31st Annual Oktoberfest (Montrose)
Sunday, Oct 5. 2nd Annual Luxury Chocolate Salon. Pasadena Civic Center
Monday, Oct 6. Phillipe's 100th Anniversary - 10 cent sammies!
Thursday, Oct 9. OC Weekly's Best of Bash 2008. iLounge, Irvine.
Saturday, Oct 11. Santa Barbara Harbor Seafood Festival
"Pumpkin & Squash" Cooking class with Chef Lawe @ The Langham (Pasadena).
Sunday, Oct 12. LAW Wine, Chocolate, and Cheese Tasting Class.
Monday, Oct 20. Dinner and Wine Pairing w Recipes from the Emperors of Ancient Rome. Osteria La Buca. (I thought this might interest the historians in all of you!)
Saturday, Oct 25. 9th Annual Japanese Food Festival. Kyoto Grand Hotel & Gardens.
Sunday, Oct 26. The Food Event: From the Vine. Saddlerock Ranch in Malibu Hills
Fri, Oct 31 - Sun, Nov 2. 4th Annual LA Intl Tamale Festival. MacArthur Park.

Lobster Binge!

It's lobster fest! I had to take just a couple hours away from work just to splurge on fresh boiled Maine lobsters!

There are lobster festivals in long beach and redondo beach also on other weekends, but last year I've found that the San Pedro one gives the best deal lobsterwise.
$6 admission (using the $2 coupon from their website), $17 for a 1.25 lobster meal or $31 for 2 lobsters on a plate! It isn't that cheap but is still cheaper than going to a restaurant!

I got ... a 2-fer of course. I was late and got there around 2 pm, but the line was not too bad. There was about a 5 minute ticket line and a 5 minute lobster line. We also managed to find seats in the back tent, and then got to chowing down our lobsters.
The lobsters were nice, big, and fresh! I thought it was well worth $31.

We were in lobster heaven :) It comes with lemon, butter, dinner roll (don't bother eating it), and cole slaw.

Since we were starting to get thirsty, I got a strawberry lemonade from a lemonade booth.
Yummy. A little on the sweet side for me, but still so delicious and refreshing. They had a few already made beforehand waiting for you - but then the girl taking the orders was so slow they might as well making everything fresh each time.

Then I had to get my favorite festival food: roasted corn on the cob.
It was pretty good here, although I have had better, sweeter corn on the cob.

I also then decided to get a Smoothie by the Yard - since refills are $5 regardless of the size, I went for the big yard cup!

We were stuffed at this point, so we just walked around. I considered playing one of the carnival games so I can get a large lobster stuffed animal, but then I decided against it...

Besides the food and some knick knack/jewelry booths, there wasn't much else so we started heading to our car.

We parked on the event parking lot on 1st street, which was about 3-4 blocks away. We decided to walk it and that way get a feel of the shops/restaurants around there. Walking along the pier was pretty nice (although the water there is pretty stinky). They had cute shops and tons of seafood restaurants.


They also had little carts along the walk, so the fruitaholic among us got distracted and got a box of pre-cut mangos.
They weren't quite ripe yet, but at least not too sour.


He also got further distracted by a fried plaintain+churro cart, and got a small thing of fried plaintains.
Pretty yummy. Sweet and nicely caramelized.

As you can imagine, we all had food coma on the drive back home ...
I really enjoy going to lobster fest ... will be back next year!

Taste of Santa Monica - A Taste and More

So I went to the Annual Taste of Santa Monica this past weekend after getting $20 tix from Goldstar. I thought with $20 it seems worth a try! There were a lot of different little things everywhere but I will just give you a sampling of what was there - I didn't visit every booth and didn't take photos of everything I visited either!

The type and amount of food they give you there vary a lot, and so did the lines. Some booths had a really long line, like the one serving oysters and also this crepe booth:
Acadie Hand Crafted French Crepes:
Buckwheat crepes with mozzarela tomato and basil; and also one with Nutella
The filling was nothing spectacular as you can see, but I did like the buckwheat crepe. Different and gave a bolder taste than normal crepes.

While waiting in the long line for crepe, I sustained myself with a panini I grabbed from the not-so-crowded booth next to it:

Chicken pesto panini from Panini Garden.

Decent panini - bread was pretty nice. A decent-sized portion too I may add. We grabbed one and it was enough for two.



I loved the Green corn tamales from El Cholo.
This was a sweet tamale filled with cheddar, cheese, and ortega chili.
I really liked the sweetness of it and thought it worked well also with the cheese (although the cheese is not evenly distributed, but oh well).

They gave you a regular sized tamale, which really started to fill me up!

Shrimp and seabass cevice from The Lobster
Not bad .... I guess? I just came back from Peru so I have high expectations for my ceviche, and this one doesn't quite cut it. Also, too much onion.

The mussels from i cugini.

This was hit or miss. I got two mussels and one was practically a shrunken little thing, while the other was a nice, plump juicy piece.



Prosciutto melone fromIl Fornaio
A nice little combination and easy to just grab and eat. The prosciutto was just okay, but the whole thing was pretty refreshing. (There's only one place giving out drinks here so any ice cream/gelato/fruit booths were a blessing for me!)

Chilled shrimp with arugula, and tomato black olive relish
from Cezanne @ Le Merigot
The shrimp was big, fresh and crisp. Nice texture and refreshing taste!

The most fun part of the festival was probably watching the "Molecular Ice Cream Lab" where they make ice cream in these kitchen aid mixers using dry ice:
The ice cream was tangy and the different "flavors" didn't really come out, mostly due to the dry ice which gives it that tangy flavor.
But it was still such a fun addition to the festival!

Of course, we didn't manage to get seconds ... we didn't end up filling up our card and there were still quite a few booths we didn't visit. Oh well. We were full though and for $20 Goldstar tickets, the event was well worth it. Not sure if I would pay $40 though! Maybe if I didn't have to go to the BBQ fest ....

You will probably end up having to buy drinks - they have a full bar and already prepared a hundred cups filled with muddled mint for mojitos!

Upcoming Food Events!

9/5 - 9/7/08 LA Greek Festival
Saint Sophia Cathedral
9/5-9/7/08 The Original Long Beach Lobster Festival
Rainbow Lagoon, Long Beach, CA
9/10/08 The Pie Hole (Pushing Daisies Tour) - they're giving out FREE PIE!
3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica. 9 AM- 3 PM
9/11-9/14/08 Hokkaido Fair
Mitsuwa Marketplace in Torrance and Costa Mesa
9/13-9/14/08 LA BBQ Festival
Santa Monica Pier North Parking Lot
9/14/08 7th Annual Taste of Santa Monica
Santa Monica Pier
9/19-9/21/08 The Port of LA Lobster Festival
Ports O'Call Village, San Pedro, CA
9/22/08 5x5 Chefs Collaborative Dinner (the LAST ONE!!)
La Terza

Oh, and then there's the much dreamed of - but can't afford - American Wine & Food Festival (9/26-9/28/08). The main event I've been drooling about is the Chef's Grand Tasting Dinner at Spago featuring Joel Robuchon, Eric Ripert (from Le Bernardin), among others. $750 per person ... anyone wanna pay for me ? :P Help a poor starving student ... ?

2008 Sri Lankan Festival

So I read on a fellow LA foodblogger (Eating L.A.) that this past Saturday was the Sri Lankan festival at Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade. I've never had Sri Lankan food before, so I took this opportunity and went.

They've set up tents all along the promenade. One of the popular booths was this Curry Bowl, that lists a Tarzana address (in case anyone is interested in going there).Seeing someone preparing the food really attracts a lot of attention. We saw them making this "kottu roti" and, of course, decided that we should get some.
Kottu roti is made from 'roti' (flour dough), chicken, and vegetables, all chopped up. "Ready to eat!" was what they were aiming for. This somewhat reminds me of pad see ew and the like, but a slightly spicier version (not too spicy though). The roti is very doughy in comparison also, a lot more doughy than what I'm used to and it made it very filling.

We also got the String Hoppers (also $10)
The yellow stuff on the top left is coconut, then to the right is some fish - according to the girl it was salmon although it sure doesn't look like it to me - a little spicy but not too bad. The strings were again, kind of doughy. I guess that's the way they like it?

I also got some Falooda, a dessert beverage from "the Indian subcontinent" (says wikipedia):
This particular one is made with milk and rose syrup, and tapioca seeds, then served with a dollop of ice cream.
Talk about Sweet. This was actually too sweet and too ... fragrant ... for my taste. You can really 'taste' the fragrance of the rose syrup. I liked it enough and drank about 1/3 of it but I was also already really full from all the food and couldn't finish it.

I was stuffed so I decided to "walk it off" in the shops and spent even more money ... *sigh*
Anyway, it was a pretty interesting festival, with a lot of new and interesting food (for me), plus it's free and right on the promenade, so if I'm free next year I may hit it again.

Mark The Dates! Lobster Fest

Be sure to mark your calendars! September 19-21 is the Port of Los Angeles lobster festival (in San Pedro) !!!

$17 gets you a 1.25 lb meal, and $31 gets you the "2-on-a-plate special"! That's 2.5 lbs of lobster!
Here's my picture of the glorious meal from last year:I think you still have to pay for admission on top of the meal, though ($8 or $6 with the coupon on the website ) so might as well take that to its full advantage and get the 2.5 pounder ;)