2009 Inaugural Los Angeles Korean BBQ Festival & Cookoff: What’d You Think?
Worth $10?
Cheapskate foodies, garlic paste addicts, festival fans and carnivores alike: Saturday has come and gone. Did you make it out to the Summit this weekend for the inaugural Korean BBQ Festival & Cookoff? Did you suffer 90-minute lines for such booths as “Flip’s Beach BBQ” (one of the only vendors with a clear, discernable sign posted) or, as did my party, did you stumble upon one of the unmarked vendors in the corner catering primarily to staff, and purchase a (mostly passable) plate for $10 or $15? Did you wait patiently for Sprinkles to set up shop, just for the chance to wait in a line that appeared at surface to be less than than a 75-minute commitment? Did you get sunburned? Stuffed? Bored? Cooled by a paper-and-wood fan that inexplicably reminded of you “Yelp”? Did you partake of the Coors Light and Blue Moon suds? What were the highs and lows? The ins and outs? The Bar-B’s, and the Q’s? The Kims? The Chis? Please grade the festival. Lay it on us, won’t you now, please. My festival grade after the jump.
| Ryan Hereby Gives The Inaugural 2009 Korean BBQ Festival: A B-Minus-Minus Its heart is in the right place, and from a strictly geographic standpoint, its location is in the right place. But those long lines have got to go, dad. Though more often than not pre-packaged with the word “festival”, clusterfuckery nonetheless maketh infrequently for a pleasant experience. Iron out the kinks, clearly mark your vendors and widen the square footage next year. Kudos to the event organizers for a decent first run…and for not charging festivalgoers a cover for the opportunity to while away the better part of their Saturday afternoons waiting in various lines, in the harsh light of the sun, on the rooftop of a parking garage in Koreatown. |
ABOVE: Sprinkles’ mobile cupcake-mobile (?) sets up shop late afternoon, offering KBBQ fest chronic line-waiters an enticing sub-60-minute commitment
we gave up after our line didn’t move for 30 minutes and just went to a tasty korean place down the street.
o Ryan, you’ve gone SOFT. May I throw up the rest of the pix tonite?
@Sino – please do. Soft, maybe. But going HARD gets you shut down – and I can’t have that, this week. (see also: sung’s photos, saturday prior)
It’s hard to pass up a plate of food as big as the corner booth (with the pig baloons) gave you for only 10 bucks. I’m not a KBBQ connoisseur like some, but i thought it was good.
i applaud them for doing what they could. was no doubt a big effort without knowing how many people would show up. and they will no doubt plan much bigger next year.
my only criticism was: coors light, sprinkles, really?
Was that plate $10 or $15? Neither one would be acceptable based on that photo (not to mention not less than $10). We need to hold firm against these increasingly common anemic $10 plates of food (as well as the $10 sandwich). Too many restaurants think this recession means they can get away with portraying themselves as charity cases that we are obligated to support because we eat out on occasion.
Wow i dont know if that plate for 10 bucks or going to HARD at any price was a bigger ripoff this weekend?!?!?! You shoulda just gone to Road to Seoul for $17 buck yummy all u can eat, Sinosoul coulda told u that!
What turned me off in advance was the $10-15 price tag on food. Those are westside prices for crying out loud! Especially since I had just eaten a delicious bibimbap meal in the (half empty) basement of Aroma for $6 (meal included an excellent !! small bowl of soon tofu and 4 korean tapas: or whatever it’s called: kimchi, bean sprouts, some kinda fish cake treat, zucchini). Etc.
You never know how these things will turn out unless you try it – I went to the tofu festival years ago on your recommendation and loved it!
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i loved how one of the emcees made a totally stereotypical remark about judge jim mcdonnell (LAPD) needing soju bc he’s irish and then tried to make it okay by saying koreans were the irish of asia…