San Diego Tet Festival 2006

During a recent trip to Vien Dong Supermarket, I noticed a banner announcing  a 3 day Tet Festival at Qualcomm Stadium. What a minute, did you say 3 day festival and Qualcomm Stadium! My immediate thought was, "man, that's quite ambitious", after all I've been to many of these "Asian Festivals", and most have been really small. Like 12 booths small, with only 4 booths of food, and 1 of them is funnel cakes, and the other is a taco stand. So we wanted to make sure  to attend, and arrived at about 2pm on Saturday:

We arrived to a pretty full parking lot, and were surprised at the amount of people. Admission was 4 bucks, and we entered and made a beeline for the food stands which took up a whole end of the festival!

Now I understand that the Vietnamese population in San Diego is topping 30,000, and I think they were all here! And all of them were talking on cell phones at the same time!

There were some pretty good size lines at most of the booths, but if you wanted Funnel Cakes or Tacos, there wasn't a wait!

There was tons of food, so here are a few pictures.

The Vietnamese food ranged from Banh Mi to Noodles; but the one common denominator was Cha Gio; it seemed that every stand sold them. Either 2 for a dollar, or 3 for a dollar. The perfect festival food, we tried several, and they ranged from okay to fairly terrible. But this was a festival, right? Part of the experience is the ambiance. What spoiled the it for the Missus was the booth that sold these:

The gal at the wire mesh window(great idea BTW, keeps all sorts of critters and dust out); took cash from several individuals with Her bare hand, then proceeded to grab the Cha Gio and put them on paper plates with the same bare hand. The Missus just got completely grossed out, and made sure they replaced ours.

Many booths had various Chicken Skewers/Sates, which ranged from $1.50-$2.50 a piece:

This one had a nice lemongrass flavor.

Banana Fritters($1.00):

Fried Chicken Drumettes($3.00):

Crispy, but a bit on the bland side. Luckily a small container of sweet chili sauce was provided.

We had to leave a bit prematurely. A combination of being tired, dry weather, and maybe some dehydration, and blood started pouring out of my nose, which took a while to stop. Funny, it didn't seem anyone noticed! Here are a few more photos:

And my favorite:

Some notes: The Tet Festival was presented by the Vietnamese American Youth Alliance of San Diego, and by and large was well put together. There were everything from carnival rides to vendor booths. But the one area I would suggest some changes would be in the traffic and parking control. Using teenagers to direct traffic didn't really seem to be working, half of them were just "hanging out", while one Young Man was hurling insults, and other four letter words at Drivers while frantically directing cars, we were waiting for someone to come out and slug Him!

Comments

[Reid]

Hi Kirk,

Interesting notes on the Vietnamese festival. There was a Thai New Year festival last weekend (I missed it) and there was a Laotian one last year (I missed it).

It's interesting, though, that at many of these events, the more popular attractions are the food booths.

[Rachel]

Yaay!! First to post!!
Poor Kirk, I know that a bleeding nose can be caused by stress and heat. Chinese belive it is caused by too much "heatiness" and can be aided by cooling teas.

Anyway the festival looked like great fun. Hope you have a better time next time.

[Rachel]

Arrgh what is it with these hawaiians being on at this time?? Reid beat me to post by seconds! I was first when I was typing and then! Ron clicked add comment on my blog same time as I did and I had to enter informations again!? :P This must be prime hawaiian time. Aloha!

[elmomonster]

Those cha gio's from the questionable vendor seemed more than a little pathetic. The wrappers looked already busted up! If she didn't care to use tongs after she handled money, think of what might have occurred while she was preparing them...bummer. Oh well, maybe the taste was more authentic this way! LOL!

[Kirk]

Hi Reid - Yes, those food booths are the most popular "attractions".

Hi Rachel - It's all those "night owl" Locals.....

Hi Elmo - That was the Missus's point. She felt kida grossed out after that.

[Jack]

We had planned to go yesterday but was burned out by the all-day karate tournament my son was in on Saturday. I really wanted to see how they would pull this large event off. It sounds like they did pretty well.

[Kathy]

I'm really enjoyed all your fair and vendors (as opposed to restaurant) posts, it definitely makes your blog unique! Those are some funky cha gio. I'm glad the Missus demanded a replacement! Fair food vendors can be given some leeway in term of being sanitary to some extent, but that's pretty gross. However, the banana fritters look delicious!

[Joan]

Looks like the festival was quite the success! We drove by there several times this weekend, but never made it through the gates- maybe next year we'll remember to check it out! Especially if they have more of those banana fritters- those look yummy :)

[howie]

Sorry to hear about your nose bleed :(

I love festivals like this. I see it as just a big excuse to eat.

Those egg rolls looked pretty sad. I was wondering if they had any with the translucent wrapper. Those seem to be hard to find down here.

[Edna]

This is the BEST Food Blog!!!! I have just started mine and feel like I just can't compare.

Anyone know if there is a Thai/Asian festival in the NYC area?

I could just eat up one side of the vendors and down the next.

What are you tasting?
Edna

Check me out at:
http://whatareyoutasting.blogspot.com

[Kirk]

Hi Jack - Yes, it looked like they were very successful.

Hi Kathy - Thanks! But, this is really just sort of an eating journal......

Hi Joan - Those banana fritters were probably one of the better things we had.

Hi Howie - Yep, the highlite of any festival for us is the food. There were many, many food booths here.

Hi Edna - Geez, thanks so much for the compliment. I think that perhaps you should perhaps look for Thai Festivals around the Thai New Year, around the middle of April - around the 13th - it's called Songkran. I think you have a wonderful Food Blog, please keep up the good work.

[Mike]

Eh kirk, do you remember if the young man that was yelling and hurling insult was wearing wearing glass or not?

[Kirk]

Hi Mike - The Young Man (19-24) was short, and thin, and was wearing a yellow "shirt". He was not wearing glasses. There were two Young Women standing on the curb giggling as he screamed at drivers while frantically waving them by. We were not in the traffic line, but were walking past him.

[Mike]

Kirk, thank you for you review on the festival. I will mention this to the people who run the festival, so they can improve upon it next year. I hope the traffic incident did not discourage you to come out and enjoy next year chinese/vietnamese festival. Next year it is guarantee to be alot better then this year. Anywho, I look forward to reading more of your review with places that you'll go.

[Kirk]

Hi Mike - I really don't think of it as a review, but as a little snippet so others can see what's available and around them. And no, it takes more then a very immature individual to spoil something like this, and we'll definitely be back next year. This festival was probably the largest of it's type that I've been to in San Diego. I know alot of people worked hard to put it on, and am looking forward to next year.