At its inception, Oakland’s Eat Real Festival consisted of
two things: taco trucks and beer. The impetus, said founder Anya
Fernald, was to promote healthy local food that didn’t bust your
wallet. A longtime farmworker activist, Fernald generally supports the
“good food movement” that’s spawned such luxuries as biodynamic farming
and Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. But it doesn’t quite fit her
personality. “I find the whole gauntlet of food and wine events really
boring, expensive, and repetitive,” she said. “The values don’t speak
my language.” Eat Real marketing director Susan Coss couldn’t agree
more. “As the economy began tanking last year we were looking at the
reality of how people ate, which was — and is — on the go,”
said Coss. They decided that if one had to eat quickly and cheaply,
taco trucks provided a better, more nutritionally balanced option than
vending machines or fast-food joints. And the beer? Well, it just
seemed like a logical beverage of choice.
The idea percolated, and the organizers thought, wouldn’t it be
great to address issues of food accessibility on a much larger scale?
Their newly expanded Eat Real Fest includes 49 vendors on wheels, each
selling a healthy dish priced between $1 and $5. It took a lot of
jiggering to keep the prices down given Fernald’s requirement that each
cheap eat contain at least one “sustainable” ingredient. But in the
end, the Eat Real crew figured out how to cut costs, limit deep-fried
foods, and still source everything as locally as possible. The concept
of “vending on wheels” gets a lot of latitude at Eat Real, which will
include two bona fide taco trucks and about 25 other trucks hawking
everything from burgers to smoothies. The remaining food peddlers will
use carts, bicycle baskets, tricycles — even a modified baby
carriage. A nearby farmers’ market will feature fresh produce, cheeses,
and cookies, while the beer shed will supply more than forty local
microbrews (eight tastings for $20). Additional entertainment includes
the canning, foraging, and cooking-from-scratch demos; hand-churned ice
cream; live music; food-themed outdoor cinema; and Friday’s butchering
contest, at which three teams get fifteen minutes to break down the
hind quarter of a steer.
Fernald wants to grow the event and ultimately generate revenue for
local food-justice nonprofits (half the proceeds of this year’s fest
will go to People’s Grocery, La Cocina, and Community Alliance with
Family Farmers). She hopes that of the 25,000 projected attendees,
about 10 percent will get inspired to alter their dietary habits. “You
don’t have to change your whole life,” she said. “You don’t have to
start growing your own mung beans.” In fact, it boils down to simple,
everyday decisions like whether to pack a bag lunch or eat at
McDonald’s. Or, for that matter, a taco truck. Eat Real runs Friday,
Aug. 28 (4-9 p.m.), Saturday, Aug. 29 (10 a.m.-9 p.m.), & Sunday,
Aug.30 (10 a.m.-5 p.m.) in Oakland’s Jack London Square.
EatRealFest.com
