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| View of downtown Columbus from the Columbus Crew Stadium. Look at that typical overcast and gloomy Ohio sky!! |
My significant other ("SO") and I drove down to Columbus, Ohio the weekend before last on August 16th, a Saturday afternoon. There were two reasons for the trip: The 4th Annual Columbus Food Truck Festival and the Columbus Crew vs LA Galaxy game (That's soccer, Americans). Food trucks and soccer are two of our favorite things, so it was kind of mandatory that we make the trip. (You try living in Portland, Oregon, for three years and not come away with an overwhelming fondness for culinary delights sold out of the side of a truck and what the rest of the world considers football).
We arrived at the food truck festival around three in the afternoon, and it was a teensy bit crowded.
Slightly overwhelmed at first, the SO and I wandered (along with my very cool and fun Aunt, a Columbus native, who was nice enough to come with, chauffeur, and let us crash at her very nice house in Dublin) through the throngs of people and tried to get a lay of the land.
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| The 4th Annual Columbus Food Truck Festival. Do you like the t-shirt I was able to capture? |
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| A teensy bit crowded and overcast. |
The festival was held downtown at the Columbus Commons, and there were over 40 food trucks, various art and craft sellers, a carousel, a gigantic bouncy contraption for kids, and a stage with a very loud DJ type person. The lines were very long for the food trucks, so we were trying to play a little bit of strategy. We tried to find a line that was on the slightly less horrendous side, at a truck that we still found appetizing. We ended up at Cilantro because there were only 5 people in front of us, and yes, we were all cilantro enthusiasts (Yes, a pound of cilantro on all the things, please). I had researched the list of food trucks on the drive down to Columbus, and Cilantro, a Latin street food cart, had been one of the trucks I wanted to try.
I have no photos of our two 'Cilantro Bowls,' one with chicken and one with pork, but that's probably because our meal ended up not being super spectacular. It was good and the pork was especially delicious, but not really anything exciting. Cilantro had run out of their street-style tacos, which is what I originally wanted to order, and maybe those were really good. The empanadas looked good also, but we didn't try those either. So maybe we just ordered the wrong things.
Next stop was Land Yacht BBQ (which again, had a relatively shorter line) because the SO needed some sliders in his belly. The sliders, one pork and one beef, were so, so delicious. And decently sized for sliders. Sorry, no photos due to the immediacy of their consumption.
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| Note the umbrellas |
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| This happened |
Fortified with a lot of sugar (and in my case, beer), we set out to get in yet another line, this line the longest we had been in yet. I decided that I wanted to brave one of the longer lines to get Korean BBQ tacos in my mouth. Korean food is my favorite type of food, and if there is Korean food anywhere in my vicinity, I am like a moth to a flame. I had been thwarted at Cilantro in my quest for street tacos, and I would not be thwarted again at Taco Sherpa. So we waited and waited and waited some more. At least we had beer while we waited. We finally made it to the front of the truck and ordered three Bulgogi tacos.
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| Korean style is the best style |
That taco was definitely my favorite thing that I ate that day. But it could have been better. The meat was actually kind of dry, and it was lacking in oomph. Oh yeah, and the corn tortillas totally fell apart. Still good though! #noregrets
After consuming our tacos within 30 seconds, we wandered over to the Columbus Crew tent and received free Crew beer koozies, and chatted with the Crew merchandise representative or whoever he was. He asked if we were going to the game that night and we told him we were, and he told us that the game had sold out, which was exciting. Soccer is catching on, people!
After leaving the Crew tent, we shopped for a few minutes, which resulted in my Aunt buying a cute pair of earrings, and then we collectively decided that we were ready to move on from the food truck festival.
Most of the food trucks that I had researched and wanted to try, we didn't get a chance to try. The main trucks on my list were Melty Crue, Paddy Wagon, Pitabilities, Mai Chau, Dos Hermanos, and Sublime Smoke. Coincidentally, all of these trucks had the most horrendous lines that only seemed to get worse. They didn't even die down with the rain. The fact that we had limited time to stay at the festival effected our truck choices.
Here's my take on the food truck festival- it's a lot more fun in theory than it is in reality. You would think having such a variety of food trucks in one setting would be really awesome- and it is to a certain extent- but the cold hard truth is that it really just results in really long lines and having to drink gross beer and stand up while you eat. And being way too full after a couple of trucks. Here's ways that they could improve the festival for next year:
1. More of an alcohol selection. This is key. How about some craft beer trucks? Who the f*** wants to drink Yuengling all day?! Not I. But I did. And it was gross.
2. Spread the whole thing out more. Getting anywhere required cutting across line after line.
3. Samples!! The whole point of a food truck festival is to be able to try many different offerings. Who wants to be full after one truck? Every truck should have sample menus.
4. More places to sit. There was like, nowhere to sit.
5. Turn the DJ down. The mic volume was so loud that we had to shout at each other while the DJ was just talking. Which was most of the time. Very little music was actually played.
6. Cut down on the wait time in lines. How? Sample sizes! Way quicker to make and distribute. Making everything cash only would probably help as well.
Don't get me wrong, the festival was still fun. It's a cool idea, and any chance to support the food truck movement is awesome. We had fun being together and doing something different.
After the festival, my Aunt, who is very knowledgeable about the city of Columbus, drove us around and pointed out cool restaurants and bars. We drove through downtown, the German Village, and some of the neighborhoods around Ohio State.
We arrived at the Crew stadium around 6:30 pm and had no trouble finding a parking spot and getting inside. Jared from Subway was the "celebrity" present, much to the excitement of my SO, who wanted to wait in line and get a picture with him. I shot this idea down in favor of finding a restroom and procuring a chili dog.
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| Columbus Crew Stadium |
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| Stadium entrance |
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| The view from our seats |
It ended up being a great game to see live because the Crew completely dominated the Galaxy, and won 4-1. Any soccer fan knows that 4 goals is an outrageous number of goals to witness in one game. We got to see Omar Gonzalez play, who was a member on the US Men's National Team at the World Cup. There was a tribute to Landon Donovan, who also plays for the LA Galaxy, who announced his retirement recently. And to top it all off, there was a pretty spectacular fireworks show after the game ended. The only downside of the evening was the traffic jam getting out of the stadium parking lot at the end of the night, which took half an hour.
The next morning, SO and I decided to take a little hike before heading home. You know, to try to counteract the 10,000 calories we had consumed the day before. My Aunt recommended a trail ten minutes from her house, so we packed up our stuff, said our goodbyes and thank yous and drove over to the trail.
The trail was part of Glacier Ridge Metro Park and it was gorgeous.
I would move to this area just for this trail.
Great hike to end a great weekend.
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