Have you ever heard of this?
OC Night Market
I hadn't. You can imagine my excitement when my friend Jill suggested we check it out! We started out with a pretty big group planning to go but it ended up just being myself, Jill and Noel and we had an absolute blast!
None of us knew what we were in for so it was an exciting new adventure! It cost $5 to get in. It took place at the OC Fairgrounds Fri, Sat and Sun night. We opted for the Friday night. It was $7 to park so my cheap ass parked over near my old hood across the freeway and I walked. We all met up about 6:30 and this was the perfect time. It hadn't been open too long yet and it didn't get super crowded until we left around 9:30.
We walked right into the crafts/artists area and checked out every booth. So cool! There were a lot of really great artists.
Eric Rader was our 1st stop and he gave us some great food tips. I had my eye on one of his little bears. They were so cute and only $20! We all decided to do purchases on the way out - so we did just that.
We did the entire vendor circle, and I'll get to what we bought later - but everyone - rad! Lots of jewelry and lots of unique artwork!
When we walked out into the food area it was super overwhelming. We tried walking around to decide what to eat but there was so much!!! I couldn't believe how many food vendors were there! So - after a slight anxiety attack we decided to all three get different things so we could taste more stuff!
I started out at Lucky Ball Korean BBQ
Delicious!!
I opted for the combo of pork skewers with rice, corn and kimchi. After rolling one of the pieces of meat down my shirt and pants - yes that was awesome - it was very good! The BBQ sauce a bit sticky but tasted great!
Noel got a pile of fries from somewhere - I can't recall the name - but they had egg, pork and all kinds of goodies piled on. Jill got some tacos and a pork butt sandwich from Seoul Street.
This was friggin delicious too! Here was our yummy start of the night:
Everything was so good!! I mean look how happy Noel is!
Seriously! Damn good! Then my lemonade was super tart - but Noel/Jill said it was fine. I don't know..
Then I dodged off to try the sushi. I mean ya had to right?
The place was
Sushi Studio Arts. The guy that worked there was hilarious. We bantered back and forth and he earned his tip! Ha!
The sushi though - Yum!!
I wasn't sure it being at a place like this, but oh so good! I tried the Salmon sushi and an Ahi Poki Hand Roll. I was lucky to get a couple of bites in - Noel was all over that!
Jill then headed off and returned with some Pizza Dumplings. They're just what you think - like Pizza Pot Stickers!
They were amazing! They did come with soy sauce and it gave it an interesting twist, but they were just as good alone.
We then wandered around for a while and saw a giant jenga. Hilarious.
We landed on the other side of the food stuff and tried to decide if we wanted to tackle more food. They also had a lot of weirdly cute items to buy. I ended up buying the happiest damn bear I've ever seen. You'll see him below. I also almost bought myself a stuffed alpaca. I mean come on! They were adorable! I didn't take a picture but they looked like this:
Right!? I figured a happy bear was enough toys for Jami.
I played a carnival game and lost - but they were super overpriced. Lame. They had food trucks along with the food vendors. There were a lot of retail vendors as well. It was like the OC Fair kind of but smaller. Or the Street Fair but bigger.
It was now starting to get a bit more crowded and we were noticing some places had huge lines. The Tornado Potato place was huge, the Main Squeeze and the Ramen Burger. The Main Squeeze line was moving fast, and I was fascinated by the mason jars with lights in them. I had to have one. So we went ahead and got in line. Boy am I glad we did!!! I got Blueberry Lemonade.
Noel got Watermelon Lemonade and Jill got Strawberry Lemonade. We all tasted each others and mine was the winner. (Um duh) and we did this a lot throughout the night.
Do you see the neat lights!! So rad! And they were $8. Totally worth it. They also had a photo booth so of course we hit that up. We opted to be "Avengers"
And then Noel took this:
I love that I have friends as wacky as myself!
We were quite full by this point but Jill wanted one more stop - so we hit Waffleland and got a chocolate waffle. It was super light and yummy!
Back into the artists area we went to make our purchases. I was trying to be careful, but I did get a bunch of biz cards and what not because I have some Christmas pressie ideas! Jill made a few purchases and I headed over to the gal who had painted penguins on vinyl records. Yes I bought one. They were so damn cute and so unique! I then headed over to Eric Rader whom I mentioned above and bought Bommer the Bear. He explained that they're launching this bear as the next big logo and he only made so many of these things. He signed the back and numbered it. I'm super stoked. He also took a picture of me that I took off his Facebook Page.
He was super cool. He made a lot of art with old cassette tapes and old VHS tapes. So rad! I would have totally bought the original version of the heart I'm holding if I could afford it. I just loved it!
All in all we had a great time! I would totally go again if it comes back to the OC. So much fun and a big thank you to Jill for suggesting it!
My stash:
