Yes, I know what you think: “Street Food Festival?! Hipster Alarm!” And it is probably true, but not everything that hipsters like must be bad. At least this is what I told myself before planning to celebrate my birthday with my friends at the Street Food Festival in Zurich. With good expectation management in place we hitted the festival on Saturday night. We started with a quick tour around before settling for a table across the very stylish Aperol wagon.
As a group of eight, we decided to “divide and conquer”, so we split in two groups and went hunting for the best street food out there. My group settled for Shanghai Bao from Wesleys kitchen and empanadas de Argentina. And both were really good. So good indeed, that I forgot to take pictures (shame on me!). While walking around, we noticed that the festival had plenty of choices for vegetarians and vegans (hello, food trends) and was heavy on the burger side too. The other team had found a Luma meat burger and hummus:
The Luma burger looked so good that my friend and I knew what our second round would be. Luma Delikatessen is a startup from Schaffhausen that refines beef with mould. They deliver to restaurants and also offer delivery services for private households. I must admit this was one of the better burgers I have eaten outside of the US – for me still the mother of burgers. The Americans just know their meat. The other team already went from savory to sweet and came back with some delicious strudels: classic apple strudel, apple and chocolat strudel and pear with poppy seeds strudel:
We also craved something sweet and found a FroYo stand nearby:
Yep, one gummy bear didn’t make it… This booth also offered vegan frozen yoghurt. I once tried soy milk and also almond milk. For me it just comes nowhere close to cow milk. I understand if people with lactose intolerance use these alternatives, but otherwise I don’t see no reason for it. I found the price for it a bit steep (CHF 6.50 and CHF 0.50 for every topping), but otherwise it was yummy.
The later it got, the crowdier the festival became; not surprising for a Saturday night with such great weather. A nice touch were the lanterns, see below.
In conclusion, it was a worthwhile visit. The festival had more stands than expected and although some where from established restaurants, the festival still offered a great variety of food options. Yes, you find food trends there (well, they want to make money) and not everything is tremendiously inventive (e.g. one booth had Pizza), but it’s fun to stroll around, everybody finds something to eat (from carnivori to vegans), it is nicely decorated and has a great atmosphere. So if you are in the area, give it a try, it is still on until Sunday. If you can’t make it: the same group will organize the Christmas market again on Sechseläutenplatz across the Bellevue square in December.
Street Food Festival Zurich No. 6
Hohlstrasse 150, 8004 Zurich
Mon-Fri 5pm-midnight, Sat 11am-midnight, Sun 11am-10pm
Street Food Festival Zurich
[…] events and recently one more was added: the food festival. I wrote about it already last year, see here. This year, they organize a “foodtruck special” happening this week and then […]