La Cocina takes tasty treats to the streets
The annual Dogpatch street food festival includes ‘greatest hits’ for its 10th anniversary
Ten years ago, the foodie dogooders at San Francisco’s La Cocina, the nonprofit culinary incubator, launched what would become one of the country’s most distinctive and formative street food festivals.
While festivals in other cities showcased the goods of estab- lished chefs and restaurateurs — the majority of whom often represent the same demographic and culinary style — La Cocina’s San Francisco Street Food Festival set out to do something kind of amazing: Feature and celebrate budding multicultural food businesses run by women, people of color and immigrants, alongside those well-known and established chefs, and charge only $5 to $10 for entry.
The fact that some of those La Cocina entrepreneurs have since been nominated for James Beard awards is just icing on the cake.
This year’s festival, which runs from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Power Station in the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood, will feature more than 50 chefs and restaurants from the Bay Area and beyond. To mark their 10th year, organizers are throwing a “greatest hits” compilation of eating activities from the past 10 festivals. Here’s what you and your stretchy pants can expect:
• A Night Market station (an ode to 2013), where attendees sit at a chef’s counter like the ones typically found at Southeast Asian-inspired markets. Experience an array of noodle dishes, broths and more from Hang Truong of Noodle Girl, chef David Tu, Little Window, Kimchee Jeanius, Pinoy Heritage and Prubechu.
• A Fried Chicken Bucket Bar station — you read that right — with all-you-can-feast buckets of chicken like in 2014, including the famous rosemary fried chicken from Fernay McPherson of Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement, plus fare from Charles Phan of Slanted Door, Aburaya, San Francisco Chicken Box, Xingones and Wing Wings.
• A Tostada Mercado, inspired by La Cocina circa 2016, where you can choose your own guisados and toppings to build mercado-style tostadas. Vendors at this station: Dilsa Lugo of Los Cilantros, Gabriela Guerrero of Delicioso Creperie, Heena Patel of Besharam, Veronica Salazar of El Huarache Loco, Isabel Caudillo of El Buen Comer and Kitiya Ditpare of TacoThai, as well as Traci Des Jardins of School Night and Armando Macuil of La Torta Gorda.
• A Whole Hog BBQ Pitmasters station (the festival’s 2015 highlight) Spit Roast Dinner, featuring slow-roasted meats and barbecue sandwiches by Reem Assil of Reem’s California, Alma Rodriguez of Mixiote, Anthony Strong of Prairie, Ryan Farr of 4505 Burgers and BBQ, East Oakland Smoke, James Beard winner Rodney Scott of Rodney Scott’s BBQ, Nick Pihakis from Alabama’s Jim n’ Nick’s and Josey Baker Bread.
• A new La Cocina Municipal Marketplace station to celebrate the organization’s latest project that will be located in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. The 7,000-square-foot Municipal Marketplace will be the country’s first women-led food hall and will offer economic opportunity for lowincome and immigrant women. The seven chefs who will make the Marketplace home: Bini’s Kitchen of Binita Pradhan, Tiffany Carter’s Boug Cali, Maria del Carmen Flores and daughter Estrella of Estrellitas’s Snacks, Wafa Bahloul’s Kayma, Dilsa Lugo’s Los Cilantros, Nafy Flatley’s Teranga and Lupe Moreno’s Mi Morena.
Presale tickets are $5 and can be purchased at www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. Tickets at the door will be $10. The festival is free for kids ages 5 and under, and for all San Francisco Unified School District teachers and their families. The Power Station is located at 420 23rd St., San Francisco.