9th Avenue International Food Festival
The 9th Avenue International Food Festival is one of New York’s street faires that stand out amongst the others and New Yorkers look forward to. This year marked the 38th annual event and I’m happy to say I got to check it out. What’s better than a street faire dedicated to foods you may or may not have tried before?! Personally, I love street faires in general so you can bet I wasn’t going to miss one of New York’s favorites. A whole 20 blocks of, you guessed it, FOOD!
We made it down there and off the subway at about 1 o’clock and having not eaten anything yet our stomachs were growling and ready to demolish everything in our surroundings. Instead of attacking the first stand I saw though I decided instead I wanted to try things I hadn’t tried before, and I wanted a lemonade. Chris on the other hand didn’t take my approach and was in line at the first Empanada stand he saw. The mere 8 months I have lived here have made me realize one thing if nothing else, that I still have a lot of foods to try! There are so many things I’ve tried here that I didn’t even know existed. An empanada for example.
We continued through the streets onto my first purchase of the day, lemonade! I had my eyes peeled for strawberry lemonade, but found a mixed fruit lemonade I decided was worthy of trying. It was a good decision. While walking with my lemonade I caught something out of the corner of my eye I decided I had to have, a blooming onion! We walked by 3 or 4 of them before asking someone where they got it. We still had a little ways to walk there, but along the journey Chris made his second and third purchases of the day. A Bratwurst from a German stand and some Pierogies from a Polish stand. Again, another thing I had never tried. A pierogi! It was a day of firsts.
After this point we were close to my big purchase of the day! Aw, sweet blooming onion you were so good to me. I know I have seen blooming onions before, but I’ve never tried one. They split the onion, fry it, cut out the center, and serve it with some kind of horseradish sauce. It was worth every cent of the $8 it cost!
After we finished the onion off our stomachs were feeling pretty full and we called it a day. I give the 9th Avenue Food Festival two thumbs up though!