Good Eats at Manayunk’s StrEAT Food Festival 2014
This past Sunday, a delicious event went on in the hipster streets of Manayunk. The fall StrEAT Food Festival was a major success, featuring over 40 food trucks with offerings from Korean tacos and innovative waffle combos to crepes and ice cream sandwiches. In addition, each truck featured apples in some way as a special fall ingredient. The festival also hosted gourmet food vendors, free yoga classes, a beer garden, and moon bounces.
A fellow blogger and I hit the street and were overwhelmed by the breadth of choices. Should I go for interesting Asian fusion or intriguing twists on good old mac and cheese? Should I have a cupcake, a crepe, a waffle, or ice cream for dessert? In the end, you really couldn’t go wrong with anything you chose, and portions were small enough that you could enjoy more than one food truck for lunch.
I ended up getting a tofu poke bowl from Poi Dog truck, which specialized in Hawaiian food. The bowl had Hawaiian seaweed, red salt, sesame, green onion, and rice, and was a refreshing start to the festival. A friend that tagged along with us got a crepe from a crepe truck with quinoa, roasted vegetables, and goat cheese in it, and that too was an excellent choice. Amanda, the other blogger, went to the PB and U truck and got a crazy sandwich with peanut butter, cheddar cheese, bacon bits and pickles.
After my tofu bowl all I wanted was something cool and sweet and intensely delicious. Luckily, ice cream options abounded. We all decided to get ice cream from the same little blue truck with offerings from caramel apple crisp ice cream to peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches. I got an apple pie ice cream sandwich, made with smushed apple pie crusts for the cookie bookends and roasted apples and vanilla ice cream in the center. It was exactly what I needed on such a hot and sunny day.
In addition to being there to document the food scene, we met a representative from Food Should Taste Good, who make wholesome and tasty tortilla and pita chips that come in a wide variety of flavors, from normal suspects like blue corn to interesting sounding flavors like falafel or chocolate. At their tent they had a 3D chalk art piece advertising their chips. Check out the time-lapse of it being drawn.
— Elena Crouch