Eat Real Festival 2010 was amazing. Jack London Square was beautiful. Oakland is beautiful.
Here are the photos:
Food Vendors and the Marketplace
Sometime Emeryville vendors Primo’s Parilla showed up with their meats and grill. They’d recently run into some sort of permit issue with Emeryville regarding the grill but that wasn’t a problem at Eat Real.
Folks from Boccalone (“Tasty Salted Pig Parts”) had a small stand:
Toussant from Besto Pesto providing samples of his pesto with super-delicious organic rigatoni pasta from the pasta shop
Rachel and her crew from Blue Chair Fruit selling some wonderful jams (including black fig, strawberry-pink peppercorn, and spiced burbon-tomato)
This guy was getting ready to make a watermelon salad in the Marketplace area:
A sale at Marshall’s farm natural honey:
The Taco Guys had a sweet paint job on their truck.
Chinese Noodle Pulling
In short, the Chinese noodle pulling demonstration was amazing. At first, being unfamiliar with the art, I was almost bored – this guy is just kneading dough. But then, he started doing some twists and stretching..
Chef Gordon from ARK restaurant in Alameda, CA gets to work, starting with a lump of dough.
pretzel-like:
In a short amount of time he went from what appeared to be a few strands of dough to hundreds of noodles:
I was able to get an aerial view of part of Jack London Square. Super-crowded. It’s an interesting contrast compared to how empty it normally seems.
This is Dave the Butcher participating in the live pig butchery competition against Dan the butcher from Jim & Nick’s BBQ . Apparently he liked the photo enough to tweet/facebook update about it: http://twitter.com/davethebutcher/status/22709779717
Cool. More photos of the butchery competition to come in the next post.
August 29th, 2010
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: 2 Comments
Gueuze and Kreik sitting on a barrel at Cantillon (or Brasserie Cantillon Brouwerij if you want to be specific) in Brussels:
I didn’t have time to take a tour this time, but it was a nice little stopover.
August 28th, 2010
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: No Comments
I went to the Oakland Convention Center to check out the 31st international world footbag championships put on with the help of local footbag (aka hackey sack) crew chaos footbag. I got there just as the women’s doubles finals were finishing up. Julie Symons and Jody Welch won the title after a spirited match.
The actual setup was pretty interesting to me. A bunch of different footbag courts with hard puzzle-piece flooring and all were set up for competition on one side, while some plastic turf was set up on the other side of the rented space for freestyle purposes. Bleachers were set up around the main court and the convention center’s own lone caterer (no BYOB allowed, apparently) served beers and wine to those looking for a little buzz.
Some of the open doubles finalists warmed up while other people juggled and performed some freestyle footbag routines in between the women’s doubles and open doubles finals.
One of the eventual champions, Florian Goetze from Germany sets up for a spike:
Florian spikes once again:
The spikes are pretty incredible. It’s a 5-foot tall net, and it looks pretty tough to be able to have the flexibility, coordination, and the vertical to be able to kick the bag downwards.
The competition got started a little late, but was worth the wait. Florian Goetze and Patrick Schrikel were in black, competing against Gilles Demers and Francois Pelletier from Canada. I hadn’t watched much footbag prior to watching this event, but seeing the guys attempt to block was pretty incredible.
Seriously. Look at this dude’s face:
And that dude’s. Acrobatic.
The finals were played to 15 points with sideout scoring per game. The match was decided by the first team to win two games. I had expected a 45 minute match or so but the competition was fierce and both teams stayed close throughout.
and the blocks:
I love looking at the expressions of the people sitting in the crowd in this photo:
In the end, the match lasted almost two and a half hours. The highlight for me was when, while in midair, one of the Canadians realized he couldn’t kick the bag with his intended foot. He was able to move that foot out of the way and switch feet to kick the bag over the net. Like a double-pump in basketball.
August 25th, 2010
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: No Comments
Bica Coffehouse (5701 College Ave, Oakland) just opened today across the street from Rockridge BART. It replaces Cafe Lyon, which closed last May. I had an espresso made with coffee from De La Paz’s 14th St. Espresso blend. It was nice and brewed well on their La Marzocco Linea. A bit bright, citrusy and a little sweet.
(Pardon the less-nice iphone photos)
de la paz 14th st espresso via bica coffeehouse
They plan on rotating their coffees between Flying Goat, Ritual, De La Paz, Verve and Barefoot about every 2 weeks. In addition to coffee, they also offer teas and a few different types of pastries from Bisbane Bakery.
saw this on the way home:
I heart zombies
“I heart zombies”
August 19th, 2010
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: 2 Comments
Cafe Gabriela (988 Broadway Oakland, CA) is located downtown right off of Broadway. The California Bar exam was being administered the day that I went and I got in just before a rush of test-takers came in for a break.
The Blue Bottle espresso was pretty good, but didn’t have the same combination of flavors that I’ve come to expect. I feel that I’m terrible at describing nuances and undertones in coffee flavor, but here I tasted a buttery ristretto with a bit of tang, a prevailing smoky flavor with a bit of marshmallow. I didn’t enjoy the coffee as much as the shots that come from the blue bottle people themselves.
blue bottle espresso at cafe gabriela
I also purchased a pork adobo sandwich which was predictably salty and pretty good. They’d originally given away my sandwich by mistake – I think one of the bar takers picked up my sandwich instead of waiting for their own.
pork adobo sandwich at cafe gabriela
nuovo point demitasse double ristretto
August 13th, 2010
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: 1 Comment
