I found out about Panda Fest about a month ago and immediately scooped up tickets for me and husband to go the weekend before our birthdays – food outings are sort of our tradition since we both love trying new things/places.
Panda Fest is happening until tomorrow, July 13th and it is currently sold out, but it looked like they were selling limited tickets at the gate and online some people are reselling if they can’t go so if you’re interested there is still time!
Read through to check out all the food items we tried and get my honest review about the experience.
Takoyaki | JoJo Takoyaki
I pushed myself out of my comfort zone with this one. Online a takoyaki is described as small, round balls of batter filled with diced octopus, but the guy at the booth said this one had squid in it (I’m honestly not sure how they’re super different), but this is not like calamari, the chunks inside are pretty large and it just was not for me…. nothing against the vendor!!
Beef & Pork Momos | Amazing Momo
These Tibetan dumplings are a favorite of ours that we don’t get often so they were a must.
Potato Mozza | CrunCheese Korean Hotdog
I’ve had the mozza version before so I decided to try out the Potato version. I didn’t get sauce thinking it wouldn’t need it, but that was a rookie mistake. The potato breading is thick and therefore a little dry and could definitely use sauce.
However, this had such a great cheese pull and was one of my top 3 items.
Pork & Chicken Bao | Spicy Bao
I’ve never had a Bao Bun so I was very excited to try these. They definitely lived up to the hype.
5. Curry Lamb | Yukun Pancake
This was one of the tops of Husband’s list. It was the one labeled spicy, but I did try it and it was manageable for a spice baby, too.
Black Panda Sesame | ODAY Creamery
I’m not normally a sweets person, but it was a hot day and I wanted to finish my night out right. This Black Sesame Panda Korean inspired ice cream was not only adorable, but really good. It almost had like a buttery peanut butter note at the end.
Mangolian Meat Skewer
Another of Husband’s musts was a skewer of meat. Except for the difficulty eating it for me, this was really good.
Watermelon & Lemon Juice
There were bar stations, water stations and other fun drink stands. I got a Lemon and Watermelon juice that came in this adorable bamboo bottle. It was really good.
There were panda stuffed animal sized cups as well, but I really didn’t want to carry that around.
Environment
Overall, the theme was really cute and there were other fun attractions like performances and there was a human claw machine (I didn’t take photos, as it was other people’s kids).
Getting into the fest was a bit of a jaunt depending on where you were able to find parking, there was really only one section for seating, otherwise many people were just sitting on the concrete. The lines were also really long for some of the vendors making it hard for traffic to cut through, etc and of course this was not a cheap exertion. Truthfully, I was expecting this to be more “street market” pricing, but the experience was fun and worth it in my opinion.
I believe this was their first year doing this so hopefully they work out some of the kinks next year.
You can watch my video review below:
Hipster Hack 