Evanston Food Truck Festival

Matt R. Is right — update desperately needed! The food truck festival has been moved to Brummell Park in recent years and has really found its groove. The city’s fledgling first attempt in 2011 is so 2011.
Fast forward a few years and this is indeed one of our favorite Evanston events of the year. Show up early with a blanket and enjoy a fantastic evening of food, great neighbors and good music. It took a little time to work out the kinks, but Evanston stepped it up and added a great annual event to the regular line-​up.

I don’t know why people don’t like the food truck festival. What part of that phrase is not to like? It’s basically like Ravinia in Evanston, except the music is free and the food is food trucks.
There are, however, prerequisites to enjoy this «Ravinia in Evanston». They are:
1. Don’t plan on parking close to the event. Park somewhere that you can walk.
2. Get there relatively early so that the food trucks don’t run out of food — as they, you know, have a limited quantity. They do try to stock for the event but it is only a food truck after all.
3. Bring a blanket to chill on.
All of those 3 things together ensure a good experience. Meanwhile, people did reviews in 2011. This thing is still going in 2013, so I hope that shows people that it’s working (and getting better).

The turn out of trucks was sad, with one truck running out of food within an hour. Another truck ran out of water or soda; you could get your burger and fries but nothing to wash it down.
As Abhay pointed out, the lines were very long. A 20+ minute wait to place your order and another 20+ minute wait before you food was ready.
Since this was the first gathering of trucks, I will give Evanston Park District a pass on execution.
The rest of the event was great. Free bottles of bubbles for the kids. Belly dancing and live music. Playground equipment for the kids. And about 500+ Evanston residence all out on a beautiful Sunday.
The best part is that the park on the corner of Ridge and Main is known by the locals as «creepy park» and is seldom utilized. At least for one day it was overflowing with local residence out with their families.

Great idea in theory — gather a bunch of food trucks, put them in one location, and have a free for all. Let people mingle amongst themselves, try out different food, and enjoy the weather. Maybe you’d consider it a ‘Taste of Evanston’. The location was decent — a short walk from the Metra and CTA stations in a big open park.
Terrible in execution. Problem was there were only 3 food trucks, 2 of which actually served food (the other one served cupcakes) and a TON of people. My friend and I waited almost 1:15 minutes for our burger and fries. I don’t even think I waited that long at The Shake Shack for a burger and fries. As we are waiting for our food, we hear from other festival patrons that the other food truck ran out of food and we saw it eventually pull away. Even if we wanted to try the other truck, we weren’t able to.
Don’t get me wrong, the burger and fries were good (another review on that) but not worth the 1+ hour wait.
I’d recommend to the Evanston Park District to ensure more trucks next year so we have shorter lines and maybe even encourage a ‘sampler’ type menu. You could easily invite another 4 – 5 trucks next year. In fact, while talking to my friend, I don’t think I’d attend if a similar event had less than 7 trucks.
This type of event has great potential if executed properly. You could really host a festival like this several times a year. It just takes a lot of coordination and ability of different trucks to show up and participate.