By David Chalk

Last Sunday, I accidentally ended up at my first New York street festival of the year. From May to September, these street fairs are about as hard to find as a Starbucks.
Still, one thing made this street fair special, something I’d never seen at one before…. there was a stand selling Korean food!

The name “Korean Food Service” was splashed across a blue and white banner. Smaller signs read “KFS,” which kind of made me think of Colonel Sanders.

Since I was supposed to be meeting a friend in a couple minutes and had already grabbed a lemonade and a grilled corn from other vendors, I opted for the lightly fried mandoo dumplings which were 4 for $2.

If I had longer, I might have opted for the $4 Japchae noodles and vegetables, or the $7 bulgogi.

Unlike some of the other offerings, the sign for the mandoo said “may need sauce,” so I got them with some soy sauce. They were decent but not spectacular, but I’ve probably been spoiled because I’ve been hitting up a lot of the restaurants on 32nd Street (New York’s block-and-a-half Koreatown), where I’d had some really good mandoo in soup the previous weekend.

Still, it was nice to see some Korean flavor mixed in with the usual food offerings of funnel cake, kebabs, gyros, mozzarepas, sausage and pepper heroes and the like.

There’s usually very few Asian options at these street fairs, often only one or two stands with pad Thai and spring rolls. (I’m a big fan of the Thai iced tea.) Every once in awhile though you’ll get a stand run by a restaurant on the street — once on 9th avenue I had some fried soft shell crabs that were amazing and amazingly cheap.

In the brief time I was outside the KFS, I only saw a few other customers. One obstacle they may face is price. The Japchae is probably priced the same or a dollar more than pad thai, but $7 for the bulgogi is probably as expensive as anything you get from any of the other vendors.

When my friend came she opted for a $7 lamb gyro instead. I kept her company with a $4 chicken kebab — I’m a sucker for meat on a stick.

From there we hit up the Cherry Blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where the highlight was a girl wearing a dress made almost entirely out of pokemon cards.