AIBU to think street food festivals are a bit overrated?

Absolutely. They are a total carb fest - pizza, burgers, noodles, wraps, pasta, dumplings. They are rubbish for coeliacs.

YANBU awful places and they never do anything suitable for me to eat (coeliac)

We have a bunch of food trucks once a month where I live and it’s brilliant. The pub puts on music and if weather is bad can just take the food home to eat. It’s cheaper than a takeaway when delivery fees are added on.
Several of the vendors have a weekly spot too.
I like the ones near work too, gives variety to work lunch and feels nicer than going to a chain.

They’re just all so samey.

I would avoid. just a load of sellers selling expensive food.

Are they going to the tequila truck first perhaps?

We're still allowed to discuss them being a bit shit though.

I went to one last week and it was fantastic. Some exceptional food and great atmosphere. I'm not sure I could stay more than 2 or 3 hours no matter how good though.

dh had an awful stomach after eating a samosa from street food recently.

I agree they are overrated, though agree some people love them. Supporting small businesses is good though instead of multi-million pound tax avoiders.

Another agreement here. I don't know what I expected but it wasn't queueing separately to collect one meal on a flimsy cardboard tray and then same again, while juggling my own food, for what DC wanted, then roaming round to find a couple of spaces on the end of a bench. And when DC's food was handed down to us, one of the bits slid off the tray and landed on the ground and the person serving just kind of shrugged.

I am loving this thread - I thought I was being a curmudgeon in thinking they’re overpriced and inconvenient in that there is always a lack of seating. I do not want to spend £18 on a small portion of noodles to have to eat them perched on the end of a pavement as all the seats have gone. No thank you.

YABU.
If you don't want to go, just don't go.

Let those who want to go.

The stalls are ruining our local market. Many of them don't survive or make much money. Meanwhile the next town along has a more farmers like market and it's doing well

It’s a lovely idea in theory but in practice you can only eat 1-2 dishes so you don’t really get to experience much of the ‘festival’ - on top of all the chaos and queuing you describe, which is v annoying.

It would be better if they made them ticketed somehow and then you can try a bit of everything for the price of a ticket and the stalls all have small samplers to just take, which they keep refreshing

I always wonder about hygiene and if vendors are adhering to holding temperatures etc. They’re not my idea of fun, I’d rather go to a decent restaurant.

I'm just not that obsessed with novelty or exotic food. I like food but it's not a big enough deal to go out my way for something like this.

Also not a fan, overpriced hipster food that is not as great as it’s pretending to be. I don’t get it.

I used to live between zone 1 and 2 and could walk to several places that had street food stalls on various days of the week. Especially the street, pop up stalls, I too wondered about hygiene! I have tried cuisines I otherwise wouldn't have- Ethiopian, Burmese, Loatian etc, but sometimes stir fries and curries would be swimming in oil, messy, the plastic fork snaps and there is no where to sit. The tiny square of wafer thin paper they give you as a serviette is inadequate and you are often beating off flies in the summer.

The reality is always over priced, below par and very disappointing.

Not a fan. Expensive. Scant seating. Nothing nice to drink with food normally..

Depends on the setting. A few times a year in the summer they have a street food festival down our local quay which can be nice on a warm sunny afternoon. However if it's in our town centre then I sort of feel like eating on a bench is similar to the Christian foundation feeding the homeless on the streets.

YANBU. I don’t trust the food hygiene of pop-ups or food trucks.

Also once Ive eaten product A and possibly B..Im full! I dont have a bird like appetite but you cant eat something from every stall so whats the point?

Yes! We went to a local one last summer. We had previously rented a house where the previous tenants left the kitchen in a disgusting state, obv barely cleaned. Post kept coming for them so I knew they ran a food truck business. Saw their truck at a thing last summer and gave a hard swerve and went for Korean street food, just so disappointing, lacked flavour, really expensive. Meanwhile DH had to queue about 25 mins for pizza as the kids didn’t want the Korean. We had ice creams after. Came away feeling quite ripped off -£80! The pizza was good tho. I know no one forced to go but it was a lovely sunny evening and it was a town festival so their friends were there.

I like the idea but with the prices and queues they end up not being that fun. I would prefer it if they all only did small, quick, fairly inexpensive dishes so you can mix and match instead of having to get a main meal because it’s not worth it to spend 15 mins in a queue to get one side. I haven’t been to one for ages because for the cost I could get a sit down meal somewhere with real toilets and metal cutlery. I went to one with really amazing looking macarons, marshmallows etc. but I couldn’t bring myself to spend £10 on 4 marshmallows