Eating Real

Oakland's Eat Real Festival took over Jack London Square this weekend. The event was well promoted but I'd hazard a guess the organizers had no idea how wildly successful it would be. The festival opened on a hot Friday evening with beer and ice cream. What more could you ask for on an eighty degree evening in Jack London Square? Well food for one thing, but that was to come on Saturday and Sunday.

On Friday the beer shed sold glasses (actually a mason jar) with tickets for eight 4 oz. tastings, which a kind friend kind bought for me. With dozens of Northern California's tastiest beers this was a not to miss event from the start. I met up with a few friends and we sat around the Jack London Square fountain chatting, enjoying the evening and watching the crowd. Yes, a huge and wonderful crowd in Oakland. The lines were long everywhere - beer shed, ice cream vendors, local eateries. Luckily, we managed to get a table at the Mexican restaurant without too much waiting. After a delicious dinner we came back for some more wandering around and a cone from the icecream pedaler. The festival was shutting down around 9:00, and plenty of people were still out milling about the square until the very end.

The Eat Real festival was "created to inspire eaters to choose tasty, healthy, good food". To that end Saturday was all about the food. Scores of local food vendors came out with their tents or trucks selling their specialties - tacos, flatbreads, pulled pork, chicken adobo, creme brulee, horchata, soup, lots of stuff I didn't know quite what it was etc. etc. The various stages had music, cooking demonstrations, gardening discussions and other food centric activities. The new Jack London Market was open with vendors inside selling local produce, jams, jellies, snacks and sharing information on local farms, gardens and healthy eating programs. The focus is on local foods, even the BBQ truck which came from Alabama was serving up Northern California bought meat.

Saturday dawned hot and sunny. When I went over to Eat Real early afternoon for some lunch it was close to 90 degrees. The beer shed was now giving out 4 eight ounce tastings with your glass to shorten the lines, luckily I still had six tickets from the previous night, which had doubled in value overnight! People were everywhere, on the lawns, in and around the fountain, seated on hay bales set up by the stage but mostly in line. The lines for food stretched for miles. I ended up getting a couple of tacos, because it's where I could find the shortest line. Somehow the sizzling heat draws out a tremendous positive energy from everyone and the hum of the crowd was a wonderful kind of crazy. It's the sort of event I really like to wander around by myself, not having to worry about what anyone else wants to see or eat. So I had a very enjoyable afternoon knowing I would be back later in the evening with a friend.

I have lived in the neighborhood for five years and never saw nearly this amount of people at Jack London Square, a friend who had lived in Oakland said the same thing about his twenty years living here. In the evening I returned to Eat Real to watch the butchery contest. It's quite something to see a team of butchers practice their art. Half an hour of carving and they had taken a quarter steer and created piles of retail cut meat. The meat was then sold, mostly to people who had pre-ordered it. Grabbing dinner before the butchery contest would have been a wise move but alas it didn't happen. So along with thousands of other people my friend and I wandered about in search of food late in the evening. Many of the vendors had completely sold out their wares but we eventually obtained a very tasty veggie burger. People, people everywhere until everything closed down around 9pm.

I have to compliment the organizers of Eat Real. It was generally very well thought out. The vendors selling street food, were selling their wares for $5 or less. Much more reasonably priced than typical festival food. And the food was first rate. It's a chance for the festival attendees to try various local foods, and a great opportunity for the local food vendors to interface directly with their customers. Someone had the forethought to open the brand new parking garage for the event, which somewhat prevented the neighborhood from being flooded by people driving in circles looking for parking. Eat Real is the first event I have followed via Twitter. I enjoyed the ease of keeping up on what was happening, who was out of food, when the atm's ran out of cash, what people's favorite eats were and other observations.

Today the cooler weather arrived. And though it looked as if Eat Real had just as many people, maybe more due to it's being conjoined with the regular Farmer's Market It seemed a more laid back crowd than Saturday, but still long lines abounded. As a final treat to myself I had a delectable handmade s'more from Kika's Treats and enjoyed it's gooeyness on the lawn listening to some smooth jazz. The Eat Real festival showed off the best of Oakland and Jack London Square. There have been several fantastic events in Oakland this year, I hope the fun continues! One more note the eatreal tag gave my flickr photos a big boost for the day!