Outside Lands is my favorite food, music, and art festival in my favorite city. This year, I was lucky enough to be invited to the 3-day festival in San Francisco to cover the gourmet food and beverages offered at the event! Even though I will be separating my posts by day, there is still a lot of grub to cover! Get ready for a #foodporn overload!

Right when we got to the festival, we started off with a bang! AQ was serving Highbrow Spaghetti Sloppy Joe’s complete with sliced pork and mozzarella. This was one of the more creative and standout dishes that we enjoyed. AQ put a fun twist on a classic comfort food…by combining it with another comfort food.

I am a huge fan of Tacolicious, so I was very excited to try their new sister restaurant, Chino. They were serving Lumpia filled with pork, beef, and carrots, and from what their website says, it is the Chef de Cuisine’s secret family recipe. We paired it with sriracha and sweet and sour sauce. The outside was perfectly crispy. I think it was a great representation of their Asian fusion style.

This was easily one of the best things I ate at Outside Lands. This was easily one of the best things I have eaten, ever. This 100% Ground Pork Belly Burger, from Big Chef Tom of Food Network Fame, was served with fried chili pepper aioli, tomatillo relish, and Cotija cheese. It is definitely going to be difficult to enjoy a normal ho-hum beef burger again.

This split pea soup is a favorite from last year. Split Pea Seduction is a hidden gem of a take-out window on 6th Street; their split pea with slow pork and vegetables is absolutely heavenly. When the wind picks up and the sun starts to dim down, this soup provides the perfect warmth and taste.

The definition of farm-fresh soul food is Farmerbrown’s Little Skillet. I have had fried chicken and waffles on more than one occasion, and this stood up to the best. The breading on the chicken wasn’t too heavy and not at all oily.

Freshroll Vietnamese Rolls and Bowls was serving delicious and fresh banh mi sandwiches. A good banh mi can change your life. It was served with aioli, pickled veggies, cilantro and jalapenos. Unfortunately, they were out of pork by the time we got around to their booth, but their chicken banh mi was still killer!

Attempting to justify the calories and a full day of carbs, I chose to close out the day with Brussels Sprouts from The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen. The crispy maple brussels sprouts were just the right amount of sweet and crispy.

Just in case you stuck around long enough to hear about the music…
EL-P and Killer Mike put on a great set earlier in the day. Killer Mike had equally killer dance moves. Grouplove had a lot of energy and did a fun cover of Beyonce’s Drunk in Love. Disclosure was our favorite of the day! They played instruments along with the tracks instead of just going up and pushing some buttons. They got the whole crowd going and everyone was dancing to every single track. For the headlining act, I wanted to watch Kanye West. Before you judge me, he didn’t go on a rant and he played a lot of classics.