Food festivals in Japan

[torakris]

It is time for the annual Thai Food Festival again! This year it will be on May 8 and 9 at Yoyogi Park. my family and I had a great time there last year and will definitely be there again!!

More information (under announcements):

http://www.thaiembassy.jp/index/e-index/e-index.htm

[meguroman]

It IS a stellar event, and is quickly becoming one of the most-anticipated cultural events of the year.

This will be my fourth one, and after the first, realized that, due to the insane afternoon crowds, the best game-plan is to get there early. I'll definitely be there on Saturday, and depending on what I don't have a chance to eat, probably Sunday, too.

MM

[torakris]

we got there as it was opening and unfortunately most of the foodstands weren't opened yet , by noon it was jam packed but even the kids had a great time. This is definitely going to become a yearly event for us!

[torakris]

How was it????

Did anyone make it?

I spent the weekend very sick in bed and Thai food was unfortunately the last thing on my mind......

The weather on Sunday was quite bad as well....

[Palladion]

I went!

I went on Saturday (after checking the weather and seeing rain forcast for Sunday). I arrived there around 1:30 in the afternoon and stayed until 8:30 or so (it closed at 9:00).

It was packed. People here had posted that it was crowded, but I hadn't expected the throngs of people milling about. When I first arrived at 1:30, there were long lines in front of every single stall. Here's a shot of the crowds:

It seemed worst right when I first got there, though that was probably more the intense sun and heat. Once I had a chance to walk around a bit and get my bearings things seemed more manageable.

You'll have to get someone more knowledge about Thai foods to really discuss the food itself; I hardly know anything about the subject (though I'm planning on trying to learn to cook some of it, as the ingredients seem to be fairly easy to obtain in the Tokyo area). I had a curry, a spring roll, and some Pad Thai. Prices were a little bit higher than I was expecting, particularly considering the small-ish portions (compared to, say, the large helping of yakisoba you can get at a typical vendor), but they certainly filled me up. The curries seemed to be around ￥500, and the noodle dishes were around ￥400. I also indulged in a sweet tapioca drink. I actually wish I had been hungry enough to go for some more food, something like the coconut sticky rice with mango and some of the papaya salad. I had stuck with familliar food in the beginning and never did get a chance to experiment with some of the more unusual (to me! again, I have basically no experience with Thai food) fare.

There were a wide variety of stalls at the festival, rangind from large restaurant setups which were spread over multiple stalls and served over 20 different items to small little stalls where they just grilled squid and sausages.

This guy is in the beginning stages of making Phad Thai, I think. The noodles are still quite white; the sauce and vegetables will be added in later.

Vats of stuff. I would guess the one on the left to be a red curry. I have no idea about the one on the right.

Prep and making of Som Tam (papaya salad). Unripened papaya is used for the salad, so it is more a vegetable than a fruit. It, other vegetables, chilis, and other ingredients are cut up into tiny slices and then bashed around in a mortar and pestle.

Grilling chicken on top of big pots? I didn't really think much about this at the time, but now it seems kinda odd.

Along with the food stalls were a variety of stalls that sold fresh fruit, mostly cut up in single serving sizes for immediate consumption. The popular fruits seemed to be rambutans, mangoes, mangosteens, and pineapples. Vendors were also selling coconuts.

There were also vendors selling different kinds of Thai groceries. All kinds of things were available, though the main focus was on instant products: instant curries, instant soups, instant pad Thai. The most elaborate of these shops actually constructed a covered, walled space that people walked into and browsed through. This shops was packed throughout the whole day and I never ventured inside.

And there were some vendors selling crafts, goods, clothes, CDs, and other Thai goods. I don't really have a lot to report about them.

The live entertainment (besides watching all the cooking going on) was held on a large ampitheater. I caught the end of a jazz band's set, then sat through a quiz game promoting Thai rice. After that was one of the major acts, the Patravadi Theater. This theater group performed a mix of acts, mostly traditional Thai stuff, but also some non-traditional stuff. They acts, which had no words, were set to music which was mostly provided by four muscians who sat off to the right of the stage, though the non-traditional act used recorded music.

And their non-traditional act, which started out with mime and then moved into coreographed fighting:

After the Patravadi theater came a band playing a mix of popular Thai songs (or so I surmised). I listened to this for a little while, but I wasn't particularly interested in it, so I wandered off to look at the food stalls for a while. I came back for the last act of the night, the Boy Thai Band. I wasn't expecting much, given the name, but I really liked them. It was a group of 9 men, all middle-aged or so, and they played rock-y jazz music, with some Thai flavors mixed in. The 9 performers played: a saxaphone, a Thai xylophone-like instrument, a Thai flute, an electric keyboard, an electric organ, two guitars, regular drums, and traditional Thai drums. They brought out a female vocalist for one very fast and jazzy song; that one was my favorite. Sometimes they would split their group up a little bit and have just the traditional Thai instruments play for a few songs.

All-in-all I had a great time, and I was glad that I decided to change my plans to arrive at 1:30 and stay for the rest of the day (I had been planning, up until the previous day, on arriving at 10:00 and then leaving at 1:00 or 2:00 to run other errands). It inspired me to try to learn to make some Thai dishes (as I mentioned, the ingredients are relatively easy to buy here in the Tokyo area; there's even a store in my small city of 70,000).

If anyone's interested, you can take a look at the other pictures that I took (or larger versions of these) here: http://cwru.risukun.com/FolderListView.asp...ood%20Festival/ just click on "camera 1" or "camera 2" for the pictures.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Palladion (log)

[torakris]

WOW! Thanks for the pictures!!

Now that I am feeling better I am really bummed about missing it.....

I have to admit it is not cheap, most of the food was in the 500 yen range ($5) and they weren't very big portions, but since I was feeding 5 we did get to try a little bit of most things (though it did get very expensive). My favorites last year were the papaya salad, any of the grilled meats and the frozen pineapple on a stick.

Looking foward to next year now!

[Palladion]

Thanks for sharing those pictures Palladion! What kinda food were they selling...I can't really make it out.

I edited my post to add some captions to the pictures of food. Hopefully my information is correct.

Prices were the same that Torakris mentioned. Almost all of the main dishes were ￥500 again this year. Noodle dishes were ￥400 or so. Desserts were in the ￥300-400 range (more expensive if they used fruit). The tapioca drinks and the bags of glutinous rice were ￥200.

A few stalls were selling bags of Jasmine rice, in ranges from 1 kilogram up to 30 kilograms! I picked up a 1 kilo bag to try out. Torakris, you've mentioned that you make jasmine rice quite often; do you steam it or cook it in your rice cooker? How much water do you use?

[growpower]

Palladion:

I too picked up some jasamine rice from the festival. When I lived in CA, I always made my jasamine rice in a rice cooker, pretty much the same way as you make japanese rice. However, since moving here, I have yet to buy a rice cooker (short on cash), so I just steamed it (you can find pretty good directions here http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/features/jasrice.html, kasma also has some decent recipes), it turned out pretty good too....

_A

[meguroman]

A few stalls were selling bags of Jasmine rice, in ranges from 1 kilogram up to 30 kilograms!

Did anybody get rice from the stall that was selling Jasmine rice for 100 yen per single-handed scoops? The limit was 1 kilo of rice. With my wimpy, small hands, it took me 7 scoops to make a kilo. Still, 700 yen for a kilo of Jasimine rice is outstanding.

As Torakris has been doing, I just give it a single wash, and throw it in my rice cooker, with water to the appropriate level. For a cup, I've always done the 200 ml. scoop.

I bought the rice last Saturday, during the most crowded day I've seen in 4 years!!

[torakris]

If you didn't get a chance to buy much at the Thai Food Festival, don't worry!

Carrefour (supermarket chain) is having their Thai Fair with lots of prepared foods, products, and events, starting today and lasting the next 10 days!

Check here:

http://www.carrefour.co.jp/what_s_new/Frame1_1.html

and check their promotion page to see this week's flyer....