Long before food-centric night markets filled the streets of San Francisco, there was a scrappy Mission Street gathering known as the San Francisco Street Food Festival.
The brainchild of trailblazing food business incubator La Cocina, the free Folsom Street event was one of the first times you could be outside, enjoying the city’s immigrant-driven food, in community with others.
It started in 2009 with a dozen budding entrepreneurs, but in the years that followed, the San Francisco Street Food Festival grew exponentially, one year drawing 100,000 people to Pier 70 for everything from tacos to momos to falafel. During and immediately following the pandemic, the festival went on hiatus. But now, after five years shuttered, it’s coming back in a big way.
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In partnership with Noise Pop, the city’s original street food festival is making its grand return on Nov. 8 and 9 at a new venue: China Basin Park in Mission Rock. Expect at least 25 vendors spanning the La Cocina portfolio, from veterans like Bini’s Kitchen and Peaches Patties to buzzy newcomers such as De La Creamery and Colombian eatery Pacifico. Early bird entrance is $6 until Oct. 12. After that, general admission starts at $14, and vendors will charge $6 to $12 for small bites; $12 to $22 for large bites.
The festival also marks the 20th anniversary of La Cocina, which now boasts nearly 100 businesses and has helped launch the careers of many nationally renowned Bay Area chefs, like Reem Assil (Reem’s California), Nite Yun (Lunette) and Fernay McPherson (Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement). Last month, Bon Appetit named Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement one of the 20 Best New Restaurants of 2025.
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McPherson, who joined La Cocina in 2011, was a relatively unknown caterer when she participated in her first street food festival in 2012. She calls it the true beginning of her food career.
“I was so surprised by how many people wait in line for you to open,” said McPherson, who sold out of gumbo and cornbread fritters that day. “All my family and friends came and helped me. I learned so much. How to bulk up for the volume you’re going to have, putting a system in place.”
She’s since applied that knowledge to much bigger gigs, like feeding 6,000 people during the Dreamforce conference. She said the festival, and being a part of La Cocina, has been especially meaningful because of the relationships she’s built with fellow alumni Yun and Assil.
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“We’re the tightest,” said McPherson, who plans to serve her banana pudding, mac and cheese and fried chicken sandwiches at next month’s festival. “We travel a lot together. We really brainstorm. When I have an issue or need help with a strategy, I go to them. I don’t think La Cocina realizes how these big friendships have been built.”
Dilsa Lugo can relate. The chef-owner of Berkeley’s Los Cilantros joined La Cocina early on — in 2007. “We came from another country and we came by ourselves. You leave your family back home and it’s hard to find a group of people you feel comfortable with,” she said.
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“It becomes the family that you left,” she said of La Cocina.
La Cocina cemented Lugo as a Bay Area culinary voice. Through the nonprofit organization, she learned how to source and use local ingredients; scored an internship at Chez Panisse, and even catered for one of her idols, Isabel Allende, at the author’s Marin home.
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“That day I was like, ‘I want to cry,’” Lugo said. “She’s your idol and you meet her and it’s even better than you expected. La Cocina has made a lot of things for me about food, but this was a life experience.”
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The festivals have shaped her, too. She remembers handing out free samples at the very first makeshift event, which was held inside the nonprofit’s Mission Street digs in 2008. “It was so full you couldn’t even walk,” Lugo recalled. “And there was a huge line outside.”
The following year, when they took it outside onto Folsom Street, Lugo sold through the 300 tamales and four cases of corn she’d brought for her signature roasted cobs — in two hours. She sent her friend Rosa to get another six cases and promptly sold out again.
To mark the return of the festival, Lugo will serve a somewhat rare dish for the Bay Area: tlacoyitos, oval-shaped, handmade mini tortillas filled with ingredients like epazote and fava beans. She sources blue corn from a Sacramento farm and plans to use her molino to grind the cooked corn into masa for the tortillas.
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“I am very excited to see everyone,” she said. “I wish we had [the festival] every year.”
Like most initiatives at La Cocina, the idea for a festival started as a “crazy unproven idea,” according to Emiliana Puyana, La Cocina program director. As she tells it, that early cohort of entrepreneurs was looking to establish themselves in the Bay Area. And an outdoor festival was “a last-ditch effort” to get them some visibility.
“At the time, there weren’t farmers markets every day of the week. Off the Grid wasn’t a thing,” she said. “If these opportunities don’t exist, then we have to create them.” Puyana remembers attending the festival when it took over five or six blocks along Folsom Street.
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“It was a phenomenal thing for the neighborhood,” she recalled. The festival eventually outgrew that location and moved to various venues and into different formats, combining forces with established restaurants, doing chef stations and devoting entire aisles to dishes like tacos or dumplings.
According to Puyana, the decade of festivals from 2009 to 2019 drew 300,000 people and helped establish many businesses. But the pandemic hit La Cocina hard, and festivals were paused as the organization went into relief mode to help its entrepreneurs weather the economic hardships through funding, pro bono legal help — and sometimes even free rent.
“Not a single La Cocina entrepreneur went out of business during that time,” she said. In 2021, the organization even opened its first public-facing food hall in the Tenderloin. It closed two years later as a result of low foot traffic and dwindling sales and was converted into a commercial kitchen.
The idea for a 2025 festival came about when members of the staff, including Puyana, started to “get itchy” and wanted to reestablish the festival. As the nonprofit celebrates its 20th year, Puyana is hopeful that the return of the festival reminds locals why San Francisco is such a special place, “a city filled with delicious immigrant food.”
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“I just want people to feel really excited and also a sense of obligation to show up to things like this,” she said. “It’s going to be covered with food from every corner of the world. The more we show up, the more we keep San Francisco what it is.”
San Francisco Street Food Festival, 1 China Basin Park, San Francisco. Saturday, Nov. 8, 11 a.m.-8 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 9, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.