LA Street Food Fest [after]

We got up before 5am and were out the door by 5:30am.  I wanted to make sure we got some breakfast so we stopped by Jack-in-the-Box.  By 6:30am we were at the LA Center Studios, where the event was being held.  The guy we met there gave us a tour of a set.  They film a lot of stuff there and apparently they were still in the process of filming The Next Food Network Star (airing summer this year) so we got to see the set.  :)  That was pretty cool.

We spent the next 3 hours setting up the booth for MobiMunch.  It was exciting to watch as the food trucks trickled in.  The chef I met on Wednesday was Ludo Lefebvre from LudoBites.  MobiMunch sponsored the food truck he was cooking on.  Apparently there's some backstory behind how that came about but I won't get into that here.  Jeffrey Saad (finalist on The Next Food Network Star) came to the event as well to act as sort of an ambassador for MobiMunch.

The event itself was O.M.G. insane.  A quick search today showed that reactions have been very mixed - people were either excited they got a chance to try the food there or were pissed off at how long the lines were.  Since we were stationed in an open space in front of the LudoBites truck, we were able to witness the chaos first hand but not get totally consumed by it.  The LudoBites line grew quickly, expanding straight out until it hit the fence and wrapped around...hit another line and turned again.  At that point I lost track of the end of the line.  The location was enclosed so there was a longgg line outside to even get in.  It wrapped around the block, made a snake-line through the parking lot next door, and continued to wrap further around the block - I don't even know how long it went for because I was inside the whole time.

So, even though we were at the event, we only really got to try a handful of food.  We were able to get some of Ludo's chicken.  One of the girls volunteering with us was able to snag some popsicles from PopShop.  I had a lime mint mojita popsicle, and it was deliciously refreshing.  It got to be very sunny by mid afternoon.  I was able to get into the VIP section and try out some other vendors there - The Fry Girl, The Dim Sum Truck, and The Tea Salon.  The lines everywhere were seriously ridiculous.  Some people had to wait 2 hours for Ludo's chicken, and then another hour to get their order.  The most successful people separated for a divide-and-conquer approach to hit up the most popular vendors.

At the very least, I feel the event was a great intro to the newest street food out there and really gives me more incentive to go find the trucks and try them out on my own time.  If I went to the event on my own, I probably would have gotten really pissed off too.