I've been to all 3 foodie fests and this was my favorite so far.
I went here on Friday when it opened about one hour after opening and the line for White Castle was already hours long. The whole White Castle thing (while awesome in concept) was poorly planned and executed and needless to say I have still never had White Castle. They had boxes of 100 sliders available for sale and apparently they weren't anticipating that many people buying them. I guess they didn't realize there isn't a White Castle for miles, because people were going to town on that deal and backing up the line. The bf and I stood in the ordering line for about 15 mins before we realized they had stopped taking orders because they were so far behind and the wait at that point was 3.5 hours. We decided to cut our loses and hopped out of line. I heard rumors they were testing to see how well a White Castle would do out here; I hope they found their answer in people willing to wait hours in line.
Anywho, we already planned where we wanted to eat. We made it to the Maine Lobster Lady and Seoul Sausage. We had seen the Maine Lobster Lady here last year, but we went on Sunday and they were closed since they ran out of food. We got our lobster on and it was delicious! The whole belly clam were actually my favorite. This truck was rather pricey though.
Seoul Sausage didn't disappoint. And, the actual guys from the food truck race were there! We got both the flaming and osaka ball. You get one honking ball per order and they came out piping hot. The flaming ball was spicy and the dip for it was yummy. I wasn't the biggest fan of the osaka ball; just couldn't get into the curry too much.
We visited the Oso Ono truck just for nostalgia purposes since it used to be the Snow Ono truck. But I decided not to order anything when they told me they only have 2 sizes now (regular and large which are both too large for me anyways) and I saw they don't have the same hand cranked machine anymore. That's what made that truck and I didn't see any point after that.
Onto negatives. I think paying admission is annoying. I'm already spending money on food. Also, I could really do without the annoying and super loud DJ and stage and all that stuff. I know Red Dragon hosts the event, but I'm there for the food. That said, I don't even really need the beer tent there (don't get me wrong, I love my beer). Or the carnival rides for that matter. I wish it was JUST a foodie fest like it claims to be, then maybe the admission would be less or nonexistent. But I'm a sucker for food trucks and will keep going as long as there's some truck there I want to visit.