Eat the Street Pig Out!
More than 4,000 hungry eaters — the best turnout to date — came out for Friday’s Eat the Street, a pig-themed event with amazing pork dishes from more than two dozen food trucks and street food vendors.
In honor of the theme, Nonstop Honolulu held a contest to crown the night’s best pork dish. Writers Mari Taketa, Melissa Chang and Catherine Toth tasted dishes from 22 vendors, judging on taste, execution, creativity and presentation. Dishes were numbered to keep the judges from knowing who made them. The resulting winner surprised even Nonstop: Simply Ono, whose plate of succulent shoyu pork and crispy chocolate-dipped bacon presented pork in two equally awesome ways.
Here’s how the contest went down, including a look at many of the special pork dishes created for ETS Pig Out.
Eat the Street Pig Out!
Later in the evening, Elena’s Home of Finest Filipino Foods put on a balut-eating contest that drew lots of gawkers. Here’s Melissa Chang’s blow-by-blow of how it unfolded.
Eat the Street – Balut-eating contest
It wasn’t pork, but due to popular demand on Twitter and pressure from friends, Mellissa Cedillo of Elena’s Filipino Restaurant held the first balut-eating contest at Eat the Street to add to the festivities. She obtained and cooked the balut, and had special “I survived eating balut” shirts made.
— Photo by Mari Taketa
Balut: The video by Mari Taketa
