9th Avenue International Food Festival

I've been to a few street festivals in the city by now, and sometimes I don't really get them. I mean, they have great food stands, curious things for shopping, and restaurants set up tables on the street to sell beer, but after a while, there isn't anything to do. It seems that all of them have the same vendors, repeated every weekend of the summer somewhere throughout the city. Then again, after typing the description of a festival, I think I've talked myself into liking them again, no sense in thinking so much about it, just enjoy a nice Saturday afternoon with food, trinkets and drinks.

Maybe I just need to embrace the fact that almost every weekend of the summer, a large street becomes pedestrian-only with a European-style open-air market. And as such, they aren't meant to be mind bogginl exiting, just a good healthy way to do some shopping, get food and spend time outdoors. Come to think of it, I had a lot more fun at this Festival since we were with friends, rather than just me and Nate.

It was also a good way to see the restaurant selection at Hell's Kitchen, an area that I don't frequent too much but seems to have an active lifestyle.

Another great element is the homemade and artisan products on sale. These soaps smelled good, and we almost bought some oatmeal soap (it's supposed to be very moisturizing), but ultimately I opted to wait and see if we could find a local brand at the Food Coop.

We bought crepes filled with nutella, strawberries and bananas. I introduced Nate to crepes with nutella at a similar festival in our neighborhood last year. Needless to say, he really liked them. I was glad, crepes rock, though I really should start looking for a Dutch panekoeken place in the city, I haven't had Dutch style crepes in a while.

Temi and Brian ate crepes as well.

For myself, I was excited to find a Peruvian food stand that had pork tamales. I was a bit disappointed with them; they just weren't spicy enough. No, that's not it, it's that the seasoning wasn't quite right. They were still savory though, and it's always good to have a tamal Peruvian style. In Texas, all I could find was Mexican tamales, and though many were quite tasty, they weren't the "right" type.