This is part 3 of my photos from Eat Real Festival 2010. For part 1, click here, for part 2, click here.
Dave the butcher and Dan the butcher from Jim N Nick’s BBQ faced off in the pig butchery competition on the afternoon of Sunday the 29th of August.
one of the judges holds up a loin:
Anya Fernald does the play by play:
more dave the butcher:
Dave the butcher liked this one:
These guys were really getting into it:
A few more shots of the pig butchery crowd:
This year’s Taste of Temescal was Tuesday, September 14th. For $30 (proceeds went to the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, Good Cents for Oakland, Lion’s Center for the Blind, Emerson Elementary School, Claremont Middle School and the Oakland Tech PTO) you got about 20 tastings of enough tasty food to get painfully full – if you chose to eat it all yourself. (Note to self: split the ticket next year)
Los Malcriados, playing in front of Aunt Mary’s Cafe:
“Texas Caviar” (black-eyed peas), salpicon (shredded beef? pork?), and a sweet potato bar from Aunt Mary’s Cafe:
Remedy, serving scones, some of Ritual‘s La Folie drip coffee, and artful barista poses:
Chioke from The Dime
DJ Crimson and The Dime in front of Kasper’s Hot Dogs on 46th:
Raciel from Tara’s Organic Ice Cream serving a variety of flavors – vanilla bean, chocolate, lemon verbena, turkish coffee, blueberry mint, and strawberry and mango sorbets. Blueberry mint’s my favorite, but I went with the sorbet this time.
Barlata had paella again..
The akido institute was not serving food.
Scream Sorbet, who are opening their store “soon”. (it’s all good, they’re still at the farmers markets) I had a delicious citrus fennel sorbet.
Bakesale Betty. I had their chicken pot pie and banana bread, but only ended up with a picture of coffee cups. they are so damned nice.
This is part 2 of my photos from Eat Real Festival 2010. For part 1, click here.
After his Chinese Noodle Pulling demonstration, Chef Gordon from ARK Chinese restaurant in Alameda started a watermelon carving demonstration. The stage MC joked that he’d be going at half-speed so that the people in the audience could observe his technique. He specified that he’d be carving a peony:
I like seeing the watermelon rind scraps all strewn about.
A little chunk fell out as Chef Gordon was carving. He explained that he usually uses less-ripe watermelons because they’re firmer and thus less likely to fall apart.
Chef Gordon also threw a carved carrot into the mix. He said these need to be fresh so they they’re still firm and crisp. Here’s a bird:
I did some walking around after watching the demonstration. Here’s some roast pig, ready for serving from Chop bar:
Here’s a hen (taxidermy?) in front of the Food Skills stage in the Urban Homestead area. As seen on Oakland Local.
Goods from the prizewinners of the Urban Homestead competition:
Samples for the crowd from the Melon Mania workshop in the Urban Homesteading area.
Elote to be:
What comes next? Half eaten elote:
Lobster roll from Sam’s Chowdermobile. My favorite food of the festival.
Gigantic Gerald’s Paella Pan. You could fit a family of 6 on it!
shot of the eat real 2010 crowd:
Carne Cruda performing at the Lawn Stage – They were goofballs.
Eat Real Festival 2010 was amazing. Jack London Square was beautiful. Oakland is beautiful.
Here are the photos:
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.
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.
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.
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)
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”
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.
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.
nuovo point demitasse double ristretto
Went to the 2010 Best of the East Bay party at Jack London Square put on by the East Bay Express on Saturday. There was a good mix if people, food, art, merchandise and music. Here are some photos. Good times.
I watched the skateboarders for a bit. This is Lem:
Ferry terminal, Jack London Square:
Lead singer for Everything Must Go! Wild set.
Gift of Gab and Lateef the Truth Speaker + Headnodic from the Crown City Rockers = The Mighty Underdogs. They put on a damn fine show. Gift of Gab shredding the mic:
Lateef the Truth speaker:
Freestyle:
lateef: freeze!
I tried to stop by Peerless Coffee Company (260 Oak Street Oakland, CA) for lunch, but found that they didn’t serve food except for the candies in their gift shop. It’s a neat building and they have a gift shop that holds various tea and coffee accessories as well as candies and books. There’s industrial-scale roasting equipment in the rear that you can catch a glimpse of while browsing the gift shop.
I ordered a shot of espresso. The girl behind the counter said it’d be a ristretto, but once I got the coffee, it reminded me more of a “double” that you can buy at Starbucks. The espresso wasn’t very enjoyable but it was drinkable and contained caffeine that I needed for the afternoon. There wasn’t much crema.
Oddly, there was an Oji brewing machine in their tasting room (which was closed when I visited)
