food porn at its best

when the bean was safely in the air with her grandma on their way out to texas, her sister and i decided to head out to arcadia for the first weekend of the 626 night market.  we'd never been there without her before, so it was a little weird for both of us.  the three of us are rather attached at the hip when it comes to doing fun stuff in the summer, after all.

the event starts at 4pm, and we usually try to go early-ish on the first day to avoid the huge crowds and long lines.  we do end up having to put up with the super bright sun and still-high temps, but it's worth it.  it was probably about 6:00 by the time we got there this time, though.  cars were already streaming into the entry gate at santa anita racetrack.  the old lady tried to snap a picture of the marquee for me, but this is all she was able to get:

we managed to get a pretty sweet parking spot almost right in front of one of the entrances, although we had a bit of an altercation with the employee who was directing traffic.  homeboy decided it was okay to thump the back of my car with his hand in an attempt to get my attention instead of simply walking up or even just yelling out, and the old lady was not having it.  she opened her window and yelled at that dude, who decided he was going to try and mouth off right back at us.  he was very annoying and really rude, and ripped both of us right out of the good mood we were in.  ugh.

at least our strategy had paid off again as we walked in and found that the night market was in full swing but not yet crazy crowded.

and as we started browsing through the merchandise tents and catching whiffs of both delicious and not-so-delicious smelling grub, those frowns turned back upside down where they belonged.

this was our first stop.  because duh, unicorn.

we never did get back here, but check this out...ramen grilled cheese:

we're always super amused by the innuendo-filled snacks here.  i mean...d-cakes, ginger sex milk and balls?  muahahahahahahaha.

dessert shaped like sushi.  the bean would've been all over this.

dole whip AND mochi?  she would have wanted that too.

a local radio station was blasting music that was mostly drowned out by music being played from other booths.

my pal dailygluttony had recently posted about this, and so i had to try it for myself.  a paper cone full of fried chicken skins to be eaten like chicharrones?  sign me up!

along with the various booths and tents, there was a pretty nice lineup of food trucks too.  mess hall canteen's menu looked particularly interesting:

and this one was offering all sorts of grub from the homeland.

like i said, it was hot.  and after perusing all of the other options for a cold drink, the old lady decided she wanted to try the honey chrysanthemum tea from this booth, which came with a bonus:

now with the bean gone, we circled back to one of the booths that we normally would have rushed her past.  can you guess which one?

as we waited in line, we watched a guy tending to a bunch of squid on the barbecue.  neither of us likes squid, but a whole lot of other folks did.  people were ordering it left and right, and he went through a ton of the stuff as we waited there.

when our number finally got called, here's what we picked up:

muahahahahahahaha.  i couldn't bring myself to pose with it like others were doing (and they were really getting into it).  and there was a camera crew filming and interviewing people for a video to feature the d-cake.  now, we all know i love getting on camera...but not this time.  no thanks.  i've actually seen the video circulating around facebook already, and i'm not sad to not be a part of that one.  although the phrase "go eat a dick" has a whole new meaning, yes?  it was nutella-filled and drizzled with sweetened condensed milk, by the way.

we stopped at the lobsta truck to pick up a couple of crab rolls for the hub (and me) and then got in one last line for fun drinks.

and then on sunday, we decided to hit up the night market again.  this time, we didn't arrive till after 8 and it was definitely much more crowded.

there were two things i wanted to go back for - mess hall canteen's drunken sailor tots and a mocha-filled pull apart waffle.  we made a beeline for the food truck first, and the line was fairly long but once you placed your order the food was ready pretty quickly.

it was a pretty generous serving of perfectly crispy tater tots mixed with cheesy ramen noodles, cheese sauce and masago aioli and then topped with lobster, snow crab, bacon and nori.  it had a little kick to it and it was really, really good.

the old lady decided to try a chimney cone - basically like a churro shaped like an ice cream cone with nutella spread inside, filled with ice cream and topped with your choice of peanuts, coconut, oreo crumbs or walnuts.  it was on the list of the top things to try that i'd read online, but she said it was just okay.

mcdonald's had a tent there this time that we hadn't seen before.  the lines were long, but it looked like they were giving away either samples or coupons for free food.

boba time!

the line for the ramen burgers was really long, so i just eyed them longingly as we passed by.

the old lady decided to try some bulgogi-topped cheese pasta from this booth.

and while she munched on it we got in line for my waffle.

it was just as i'd remembered from last year - soft, just a little bit sweet, and perfectly chewy.  so good.

there are at least two other weekends on the night market calendar for this summer, and you know we'll be going back.  and next time...no more d-cake for us.