AIBU to think street food festivals are a bit overrated?

[brightonbabe86]

There is a street food festival on locally to us this weekend. We’ve been before a number of times and to some other ones else where. Some of our crowd want to go again but I’m getting a bit fed up of them. I think the food the vendors make is often really nice but under street food festival conditions things go down hill fast. It’s either really hot and sunny with no shade or raining with no cover. It’s crowded, the queues are massive, quality control under the pressure goes down quickly so your food is a bit undercooked or things are missing, there isn’t enough seating, the food can be restaurant prices and the bars are also crowded and expensive.

So I know you are thinking just don’t go then and I’m probably not going to go. I did go to one that started at lunch time and we went at about 2pm, it was really quiet and that was actually quite nice. But am I being unreasonable to think that they are a bit overrated and to wonder if there are only really worth it if you enjoy big crowds?

Best I have been to was in Italy. Good food. Served fast, dead cheap. ( think £1.50p per person - was a few years ago), but hygiene was excellent. Pizza or cheap chicken dinner. That was the choice. Wine extra. Limited but done very very well.
Good tables and benches and lots of them. Not all wraps this, and burger that, or hot chilli this and that. Pizza or chicken.
It really was a notch above and superb.

I’ve always found them a bit grim, but plenty of people love them. 🙂

Ok I’m going to go against the grain, I like them. I like being able to get something I wouldn’t have normally, like churros. I like being able to mix cuisines in a way you probably can’t in a restaurant, e.g. Chinese for main, Spanish for dessert. I haven’t found them exorbitantly expensive, certainly not compared to the now-ridiculous price of food in supermarkets and restaurants. Post-Covid, I like eating in the fresh air. I’m sure there are bad ones, but at the few I’ve been to, the food has been really tasty. I enjoy them with friends and on my own. I think the main thing is to try not to go at peak times when the crowds and queues are overwhelming, but that applies to anything really.

Always jam packed full of hipsters making out it’s the most exciting thing they’ve ever been to

Too much choice. Id prefer to pay an entrance fee and have sample size food from each vendor. Like a sampling menu. Could give you X number of tickets to avoid gluttony.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Let those who want to go.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Are they going to the tequila truck first perhaps?