When the Isthmus Food Cart Fest began in 2012, I'm not sure anyone at Isthmus knew for sure what the level of interest in such a festival would be. It turned out to be high — tickets were a hot item and have continued to be each year.
One hope, that first year, was that the festival would increase the visibility of some of the carts. Gathering a bunch of carts all together in one place on a Friday evening would give people who didn't work downtown or on campus a chance to eat at a cart, or sample more of them.
A lot has changed in just four years. Cart visibility, viability and mobility have all increased. Mall-concourse food carts are increasingly appearing at neighborhood and street fairs on weekends. The city tried out Meet and Eat neighborhood cart gatherings. Weekday noontime vending has been established at Dairy Drive, Epic Systems, University Research Park, and the Public Service Commission building (that's 610 Whitney Way). Let's Eat Out has staked out over a dozen neighborhoods across the city and manages a rotating cast of carts Monday-Thursday.
As the food cart landscape has changed, so has the food cart fest. This year, the Isthmus fest moved from Friday night to Sunday afternoon — more of a dead zone for cart vendors, for whom an extra afternoon of sales can make a big difference.
It also released the fest from a bit of a "dinner grabbed after work" feeling to a more relaxed atmosphere of noshing, sipping a beer, and listening to bands in the gorgeous setting of Olin Park. The weather — just a day after a miserable, cold rain — did everyone a favor by being the kind of cool, sunny, insect-free spring day that it seems we don't get many of any more. Perhaps the balance shifted a little bit from "food carts" to "festival."
Carolyn Fath
Looking Glass Bakery's lemon lavender white chocolate cheesecake.
Other cities that hold food cart festivals do them different ways. In Ohio, the Columbus Food Truck Fest, for instance, has more of a Taste of Madison/Art Fair on the Square-type hybrid, with a three-day open-admission festival, with bands and a craft fair, in downtown Columbus. Here diners are just ordering regular food items from carts, regular portions mostly, so the aspect of getting to try samples from all different carts at once is missing.
Portland, Ore. — a city where it's hard to walk two blocks without stumbling into a food cart (and would in that sense seem not to need any special festival featuring them) — does have its "Eat Mobile" fest. This has been a ticketed event with 30-some carts offering sample size portions and a "Carty" award voted on for best food. This festival also offers a premium VIP ticket price that offers an hour-and-a-half jump on general admission for much shorter lines at the carts.
The San Francisco Street Food Festival's system is even more complicated — suffice it to say it involves many different levels of "passports" that allow different levels of access. In 2011, when Madison's Ingrid Rockwell of Ingrid's Lunchbox was an invited guest at that fair, she told Isthmus that the organizers expected cart operators to produce "one order every 15 seconds."
This year the Isthmus fest — a ticketed event, limited in numbers so that the carts can better keep up with the customers — had carts giving sample portions, but some carts also offered the option of customers ordering full-size menu items at regular price.
The fest is also one way to have a beer along with your food cart meal. (Unlike Portland, whose food cart pods are more and more frequently including nano-breweries, Madison's cart scene is dry.)
Ellen J. Meany
Banzo's falafel frosted with a dab of tahini.
Carts that had minimal-to-no prep and samples all lined up had short lines. The Looking Glass Bakery, a new mini-cheesecakery that's been selling at the Mad City Bazaar and Let's Eat Out nights, had a hit in its lemon lavender white chocolate cheesecake. Banzo was doing a brisk business in falafel frosted with a dab of tahini. Johnson Public House's Kin-Kin coffee was sampling its iced coffee — easy to prep, delicious, but perhaps not as popular as there was also beer available. This may have also explained the short lines at Cafe Social, another coffee stop.)
The Green Mustache Juice Bar had small cups of smoothies. The Pickle Jar was offering its excellent pimento cheese spread on crackers. FIB's — with samples of Italian beef or Polish sausage — and Hayne's Kitchen, with sausage or Philly cheesesteak samples — also kept lines moving.
Fortune Cafe offered a choice of squash curry, the vegan peanut lontong (rice cake and greens with peanut sauce) or cendol. (Note, Fortune Cafe is changing its name to Jakarta Cafe to better reflect its Indonesian menu.)
Masarap, the new Filipino cart, was offering samples of caldereta stew in either chicken or tofu versions, and various fillings in its crispy lumpia egg rolls, including a special Farmer John's Cheese and Door County Cherry (my pick) — although needing to keep frying lumpia kept lines at this station long. A visiting truck from Kenosha, El Chile Caliente, featuring Mexican and Puerto Rican dishes, had two order windows going at once.
Standing in some lines, though, is inevitably part of an event like this. Happily, putting a blanket on the hill, chatting with friends, and listening to the band, is too.
