I didn’t spend as much time in Luxor as I did in Cairo, but I enjoyed it a lot more. There are just as many people trying to make a living off of tourists, but they have a much better sense of humor about it. One thing Luxor did have in common with Cairo was that the street food was much better than the restaurant food.
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When I think about Cairo, the first thing I think about is the traffic. For any given two-lane road there’s at least three lanes of cars, usually bumper to bumper. Crossing the street is both a science and an art. One Cairene told me that the real Egyptian way to do it is to just close your eyes and go, but there’s more to it than that. You can watch and wait, and your brain can do the calculations to let you know if there’s just enough space between two cars, and if they’re moving just slow enough. Then again, sometimes there is no good time to go and you just have to step out into the street — the closed-eye method. There’s also the sense that the roads, as well as the ramps and the sidewalks (or lack thereof) are more complicated than they need to be. Perhaps this is a consequence of being such an old city (modern Cairo goes back about 1000 years); roads and paths were hallowed by time long before cars, and the infrastructure just went up where people expected them to be. The good news is that as long as there have been roads, there have been people who sell food to those traveling upon those roads. And in fact, the street food in Cairo is better and cheaper than any of the restaurant food I had while I was there.
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So the LA Street Food Fest on Saturday wasn’t a total epic failure. I did get to eat a few things, from The Gastrobus and Dim Sum Truck, and let me just say, there were pretty damn good. The only plus side of the VIP lounge was the free booze, trying out different teas from T Salon (which I found out is from NY), and catching the debut from the Dim Sum Truck.
How do you want to f–k with people? How do you make people regret paying $30 for a VIP ticket? How do you make people feel like they wasted their day standing in 1 line for 3 hours just to eat few bites? I guess it was pretty easy at the first LA Street Food Fest that was held today in downtown LA.
I admit that it was a great idea and mad props for the people to pull this whole event off. BUT I did not see any sort of planning on their part. On their site it said “Get ready to eat your heart out” well I didn’t really eat my heart out. I only had the patient to stand in line for 1 truck. I know I know I can’t blame them for my inpatient but it’s really no fair to the attendees and to the truck vendors when they don’t try to have a manageable number of attendees. People were sad to be turned away and frustrated to be in line for 2.5hrs for food. And when the trucks run out of food, who will the people blame? The food trucks of course. It was said that 15,000 people passed through the gate today. If you’re a truck vendor how do you prepare for that? You want to keep the line moving but you can only move so fast. I am still reading a lot of angry tweet about today.
So VIP. General admission was $5 and VIP was $30. Good thing I got a media pass and did not have to pay that stupid $30. For $30 you get a private bar, a lady chatting with you about her fake grass, a patio with a stupid view, a gift bag, and restrooms. I felt bad for the $5 people, where will they pee? Probably the best part with as a vip was to try dim sum from the Dim Sum truck. I’ll write about what I ate in a later post. Just those few things, how does that considered as VIP? VIP means F U I’m gonna go cut that long line! Nope, no cutting. You still had to stand in those long lines.
Also this was not a celebration of street food in LA. Where were the taco trucks?
This was quite sad. Also it took me 30mins just to find a stupid parking and I had to pay $7 for it. Argh LA!!!!!
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Is it possible to live in a city for over 20years and practically know nothing about it? How was it possible for me to only recently found out about all these street tacos wonderness in my own backyard (even if the backyard is about an hour drive away)? I guess I know why. I didn’t REALLY get into everything food until I moved to NYC and started this blog. I didn’t REALLY appreciate awesome authentic tacos until I became obsessed with the trucks at Red Hook. And I didn’t REALLY get into the street food scene until this whole street food wave that took over 2009. But then still I wasn’t able to grasp just how many street taco vendors are in Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Boyle Heights and etc… Not until I came upon Dylan Ho’s post about street tacos in LA. And after watching Dan Delaney taco crawling with Dylan, I wanted to go street taco crawling as well and actually pondered about asking Dylan as my tour guide. But decided not to, seem so out of the blue and he probably either ignore my email or say no. Then I thought about, hey I can just write down the locations of all the taco stands he blogged about and have my own little taco tour! And two things really set this tour into stone were Jonathan Gold, from LA Weekly, writing about Antojitos Carmen and Breed Street Scene in Boyle Heights and included their Twitter accounts. The second thing was my friend Sandy wanted to have a street taco tour as well and actually lives near to most of the vendors.
I’ve done many food tours before small and big so I wasn’t expecting any different from this taco tour. It was like okay, let’s go get some tacos. I wasn’t prepare massive this whole thing was and I still don’t. I thought the 2 nights that I went pretty much covered most of the vendors but then on Yelp and a closer look at Dylan’s blog, proved that there were many many more.
Anyways let’s start this frakkin epic journey and I do mean E P I C.
oneThere were many things on my to-eat list this time around. Compare to my last trip home, which was just an extended weekend, I had to pack a lot of food trucking into 1 day. This time around I had a total of 11 days……11 days of 70 degree LA weather perfect for outdoor dining.
I was looking through buttermilk Truck’s schedule for the week that I was in LA. Seemed like I had to drive a long distance no matter what so I decided to go on Monday because out of the whole week they were parked the closes to me, in downtown LA near Little Tokyo. It was still a good 50min drive without traffic. But on Sunday night I wasn’t sure if I reeeeaally wanted to wake up early for the drive.
A farmer’s market is the best place to go if you want to buy your food locally and organically. It’s also a great place to support the farmers who grow the food. Here at Eat To Blog we are proud to announce that we are teaming up with Chef Antonio Medina from The Gastrobus to offer you a guide around farmer’s markets in Los Angeles which we call “The Organic Tour.”
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