Let’s eat outside

From bacon-wrapped hot dogs in the predawn Tijuana light to chestnuts roasted on an open fire in Central Park one brisk December day, my most memorable culinary experiences have occurred far removed from fancy restaurants. I’ve long felt the best way to really experience the flavor of any given community—the good and the bad—is on the streets.

In the past decade, this line of thought has become more mainstream, with world-renowned chefs in larger cities recommissioning roach coaches and flaunting their street cred like gangster rappers. People who’d formerly turn up their nose at the thought of eating from a barbecue with a hitch attached to it now blog and Yelp about their favorite vagabond gourmets.

Chico has a rich tradition of keeping the action on the streets legit. Local street-food entrepreneur and foodie John Geiger—the longtime proprietor of Crazy Dog who just opened Inday’s Filipino Food with his wife, Ethel—recently started a Facebook page called Street Food, Chico, dedicated to “celebrating any food served on the sidewalks and streets of Chico, from taco trucks to coffee carts, to wiener wagons!”

Geiger invites the page’s 400-plus-and-counting members to post reviews and spread the word about their favorite street eateries.

An excellent way to sample some of the finest street cuisine Chico has to offer is with a visit—or more likely several—to the Thursday Night Market. The market hosts roughly a dozen food vendors, making it ground zero for a weekly street-food rumble. I recently embarked on such a mission with a half-dozen friends, to ensure we could sample as much as possible in a single visit from a broad range of carts and stands.

This was our plan of action as we scattered up and down Broadway, each of us picking a few separate places. When we reconvened on a patch of grass at City Plaza 15 minutes later, we’d assembled a feast consisting of three Korean tacos (Annie’s Asian Grill, $5), a “boat” of tequila lime riblets (Kinder’s Meats & Deli, $5), a cheeseburger (Turri Farms, $7.75), three tamales (Maria’s Gone Tamales, $2 each), three cupcakes (Cupcake Crusader, $2 each) and two Mexican ice cream bars (La Flor de Michoacán Paletería y Nevería, $2 each).

Most of us started off with a piece of beer-battered fried bacon, served on a stick from the Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack stand ($1). Like hundreds of other people, we simply couldn’t pass up the temptation. The woman ordering next to me seemed a little disappointed with herself. “I guess I’ll take that bacon nonsense,” she ordered with a sigh. Reviews among our party were mixed, but I enjoyed it, and probably will have to spend another buck there this summer.

We tried three types of Korean tacos (spicy pork, chicken and tofu), and most of us enjoyed the spicy pork ones the most, with tofu not going over well in our group. Maybe next time I’ll garnish the tofu taco with a piece of the fried bacon.

I’m a huge fan of Big Chico Burger, also a regular vendor at the market, but was not disappointed by the delicious Turri Farms burger (made with grass-fed, grass-finished, natural beef), which was among the highlights of our shared meal. Another big hit were the tamales (pork, chicken, jalapeño and cheddar), with many favoring the pork. My favorite was the jalapeño and cheddar.

Our riblet boat consisted of six pieces, four of which were delicious and offered ample bits of succulent rib meat. Two were virtually inedible—all bone and gristle, especially disappointing since the others were so good.

Dessert was pretty awesome. The cupcakes—strawberry, chocolate and cookies-and-cream—were delicious, light and airy, not overly sweet, and satisfying, even shared as they were among six people. I was looking forward to the ice cream, and have been wanting to try La Flor de Michoacán since it opened at Nord and West Sacramento recently. We passed two bars around, one strawberry and one vanilla caramel, both dipped in delicious chocolate and rolled in a mix of fruit, nuts and candy. The perfect end to a delightful meal.

There’s plenty more food to sample Thursdays and every day on the boulevards, byways and backstreets of Chico. Get out there, find it, and spread the word.