Art Seen: Street food at the Castleberry Hill Art Stroll

The culinary arts were on display during last Friday’s Castleberry Hill Art Stroll. The Atlanta Street Food Coalition brought in four vendors to offer up quick bites between the galleries. The group is still working to get restrictive vending ordinances changed so that awesome, street-side food like this can be the typical, rather than exceptional, offering in Atlanta. There was plenty of good art to be seen, including some awesome pieces from Larry Walker and Robert Rauschenberg at the newly minted Peters Street Projects, but the new food options were definitely the talk of the evening, inside and out of the galleries.

Santiago’s tent, set up in the parking lot behind Artist Trifecta and Besharat, had my favorite dish of the evening: a spicy cup of pozole for just three bucks. The broth was particularly flavorful, soaking into the tender shredded chicken and corn. His tent was also serving up horchata, but not the refreshing, iced beverage I was used to drinking in San Francisco. This version was a mouse-like concoction of the same sweet flavors served in small cone. Santiago says that if the regulations get changed, he’s hoping to set up his tent in Highlands for lunch and late-night weekend offerings.

The Good Food Truck has been hitting a lot art-related events lately, and during the art walk they were parked behind Marcia Wood Gallery. Their watermelon-arugula salad served in a parmesan cone surprised me, the combination of cheese and fruit flavors were a perfect match. Their “poodle” is a hot dog dressed in a sweet apple slaw with a french toast bun.

Hayley Richardson of Artichoke Bliss and the Street Food Coalition was there, of course, serving up her creative takes on ice cream sandwiches at Castleberry Point. She’s been one of the tireless activists bringing the street food conversation to the forefront in Atlanta and was instrumental in putting together this collaboration.

I couldn’t find the Kogi BBQ truck, who were expected to be among the vendors, but that was probably my own fault for not looking at the online map ahead of time. Hopefully they’ll be back next month.