Street style food has always been my weakness and the plethora of food options that New York has from world over never disappoints me. This is my photoessay from my visit to the 9th Avenue International Food Festival 2017.
So being in New York, we have a lot of International Festivals during Summers, from Dance Africa this memorial day weekend to IIFA 2017 in July where Bollywood would celebrate with awards (information here) to probably till Thanksgiving and New Year. I think the crowd never gets tired here, its one of the few places apart from Vegas where crowd and the activities keep the spontaneity of the city alive.
On my visit to 69 Charlton Street one Friday afternoon to meet someone in Visit.org office to which now I am an ambassador, I passed through a street fair. Albright small, that fair connected me to a few people. One of the folks who was into Jewelry - told me why not come tomorrow and day after to my stall - at International Food Festival and I was like what is that? So basically, it happens every year and its quite popular with the locals and tourists alike. If you happen to be in the city when the next Food Festival happens, mark the calendar. You can find the information here.
In fact, US celebrates so much during summers that they are never dull.
One of the ways to get involved in the culture of the city is to explore the festivals that brings out the city in totality and the crowd in unison specially during weekends. Its the varied ethnicity that makes US so special.
So this happens at 9th avenue which is fairly easy to reach. Just behind the Port Authority Bus Terminal from one of the exits and just a few steps away is where it starts and takes us upto a line of blocks.
What I found interesting about this festival was there was not just food that was on offer, but it was like a grand flea market of sorts. So you had jewelry to household items to decorative items to flower pots to food and that made it such a cool place to be at. Plus there were performances by artists of various cultures and even random street music.
And for everybody who says that New York is expensive, they are simply talking about Gourmet Food, Transportation, Tours, Rents, Grocery and etc. Yes day to day life compared to everywhere else is expensive. But living here as everywhere else, we find hacks that prevents us the hole in our pockets and thats how we survive. And so food is not expensive in New York if you are aware of the inexpensive outlets that provides you with good food in certain localities . And 9th Avenue International Food Festival can be called a landmark event where food was fairly in average inexpensive and in variety - there were stalls from all over the world - like Greek Food, Thai Food, Jamaican Food, Ethiopian Food etc.
So, It is in those moments of celebrations - the coolness of New York lights up!
New York International Food Festival on 9th Avenue happened on Saturday & Sunday – May 14th and May 15th. Ninth Avenue is from 37th street to 57th street.
For those who are in the city during memorial day weekend (that is this weekend) we have Dance Africa event. I unfortunately wouldn’t be in the city, but just in case if you happen to be, it may be a good place to be at.
I wanted to talk about it because unlike Milwaukee365 which was carried by Milwaukee Tourism that would weekly mail important events in the city as well as list the popular few on the website along with others on the side, I am having a hard time here trying to figure out the major events each weekend because I see a list of events (sometimes even 91 events on a weekend) on the official NYCGO website. And most of the event that I till now have covered is by word of mouth. So I can understand as a new traveler to the city, probably you wouldn't even know something like this is happening in the corner.
So let’s take you to a quick photoessay from the event:
Streets in NewYork look quite lively. Reminded me of a food festival I attended in Budapest very recently.
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