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:

Amazing. The guy was incredibly fast. One second there was a lump of dough, the next second, hundreds of noodles.

Aerial view of part of Jack London Square. Crowded.

Dave the Butcher. Butching. Has a website – will link later.

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.

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:

Lem in the air

Ferry terminal, Jack London Square:

ferry

Lead singer for Everything Must Go!  Wild set.

"everything must go!"

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:

gift of gab

Lateef the Truth speaker:

lateef

Freestyle:

lateef and gab

lateef: freeze!

freeze

this past weekend, about 32 of us were treated to an eight-course beer-paired culinary adventure: eating about beer 2010.  More extensive descriptions of the event will be written by the makers in the near future, so for now just I’ll share a few pictures:

sopressata, cured at home

“a selection of seasonal pickled vegetables” arranged symmetrically

homebrews in fancy packaging

buckwheat soba noodle making

homebrews on ice

soba going through the pasta maker

topping for the sicilian chickpea fritters

pickled vegetables cut up for serving

marzen model

soba with cale, shredded daikon and dipping broth

peruvian ceviche

ratatoullie with cheese scraping

pork chop

prost!

adding wheatberries to the salad

mustard, in nugget dipping containers

nuggets, with dipping containers, in serving boxes

fancy napkins for the nuggets

tapioca with a hazelnut and coffee shortbread cookie

the eab crew at the end of the night

went to cesar chavez park to say goodbye to brook.  along the way saw some gigantor octopus kites that make up the octopile, for a preview of the berkeley kite festival:

gigantor octopus kites

gigantor octopus kites

gigantor octopus kites

gigantor octopus kites

Today was the 7th annual Temescal street fair along Telegraph ave in Oakland between 45th and 51st avenues.

temescal street fair banner

Berta Olivia y su mariachi performed an impressive set near 51st ave:

berta olivia y su mariachi

there was a train (with a horn) for the kiddies:

train for the kiddies

oakland recycles and composts:

oakland recycles and composts

I couldn’t resist stopping by the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse.  I’d sadly never been in there.  There is so much awesome junk just begging to reused (or “upcycled” if you will):

cassette tapes at the east bay depot for creative reuse

awesome drawers of markers and pencils with scribble marks everywhere (of course!)

markers at the east bay depot for creative reuse

Raciel and Tara  (and sorry, I don’t know your name) from Tara’s Organic Ice Cream at their tent:

tara's organic ice cream

Bartender at Barlata:

bartender at barlata