SoMa StrEat Food Park
Whilst here it would have been wrong not to go and suss out SoMa StrEat Food Park in San Francisco.
On a sunny California day we drove to Milbrae from Foster City to take the BART into San Fran and got off at 16th St Mission. SoMa is resident in a car park next to an enormous Costco store and easy to find.
The site is actually quite small. Compact but well laid out with plenty of seating including a heated seating pavilion, rather nice on site toilets (this is always a good thing!), ATM machine, big screens for sport and WIFI. The WIFI is a great addition especially for folk like us who dare not use our data roaming for fear of a £1m mobile phone bill.
First stop to grab a beer from the on site bar and then to scour the traders on site for something to try. I honed in on Sam’s ChowderMobile from Half Moon Bay. It was a chowder fest day but already having had my fair share of chowder I opted for a ‘short’ lobster roll, you could also have a ‘long lobster roll’. When ordering I was asked, “anything else?” as if I wasn’t ordering very much. Having a visual scout around I could see why as most folk had a ginormous pile of food!
My lobster roll was delicious as most are, huge pieces of lobster in a light & fluffy brioche roll and it was accompanied by a lovely portion of coleslaw too.
The Baron chose to have a pulled pork bun with cheese, slaw, hot sauce and jalapenos from Adam’s Grub Truck billed as “a mobile food kitchen operating in the northern peninsula bay area serving an infusion of Chinese and American traditions into uniquely delicious sandwiches”. It was a good bun that held up to its juicy contents and by all accounts pretty tasty.
The place had a good vibe and great venue for a party too, up 1,000. The one thing I do feel though is that I think that UK Street Food traders appear to have more passion about the provenance of their food and their product. We seem to have a greater variety of types and choices, plus the UK traders seem to be more creative with their mobiles, conversions of vehicles.
That said the US food trucks are quite impressive and of course they have to endure driving the freeways in them which is no mean feat (driving like a local here means doing whatever you want in whichever lane you want and no vehicles appear to have any working indicators!)
We enjoyed SoMa and would go back as they appear to have quite a good rotation of traders, though our favoutite food truck so far has to go to Del Popolo who we saw at Off The Grid at The Presidio, a converted shipping container with a wood fired oven on the back of a flat bed truck.
If you’re around the bay area do take time out for a stop at this hip food truck stop.
