Local gourmandizers: consider this your notice. Two competing food festivals are slated for this Saturday. Attending both is possible—and would surely be amazing—though it might land you in a full blown food coma for the rest of your weekend.
First up, whether fettuccine or low mein is your jam, there’s something for everybody at Noodlefest, which makes its triumphant return to Chinatown and North Beach after a 10-year hiatus this Saturday.
This cross-cultural and inter-neighborhood celebration of everything from gnocchi pomodoro to Nepalese fried noodles features strings, strips and tubes of dough from 30 different vendors to slurp, twirl or nosh as well as noodle-making demonstrations and live music.
Celebrity chef and James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Martin Yan; San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho; and the city’s king of living large on the cheap, Broke-Ass Stuart, will taste test a slew of noodles to crown a winner. While the event is sold out, a limited number of tickets will be available on Saturday on a first-come, first-served basis, so scurry over early to grab one of these golden tickets.
But gormandizers beware: Filling up on noodles, means you may not have room for the oodles of ube on tap at the District 6 event space over on the Mission/SoMa border.. In recent years, this violet colored root vegetable has popped up in ice cream, brownies, macarons and even doughnuts. At Ube Fest, you can sample lilac cupcakes from Filipino fusion bakery Marley’s Treats, mauve crinkle cookies, rice crispy treats and fudge from SF’s own Buko Bakes or a vegan doughnut treatment of ube from roaming pastry pop-up Whack Donuts, among others.
Grant Ave. between Green St. and Pacific Ave.
Saturday, April 30, 2 p.m. | $20
District 6, 428 11th St.
Saturday, April 30 | $5-$60