LA Curry Festival

I had a great time at the LA Curry Festival. Though I think they should call it Thai Festival. Wasn’t it called that last year or the year before? There wasn’t that much curry there especially vegetarian curry. I did enjoy some mango sticky rice and drank beer all day for the first time in my life. It was pretty fun. I enjoyed the dancers, the beer garden, the shops. Overall really great!

ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!!!
Yeah, i didn’t see any curry… thats because there was way toooooooo much things going on. Highly suggestion ppl go next year if they’re not doing anything. Parking is far, so put on your walking shoes & sunblock.
They had Muay Thai Kickboxing Tournament with prestige gyms/​teams. Best of all it was free! Usually cost!
The beer area was crazy, so worth chilling there. Go on a picture freenzy there because its just local fun. Real Thai ppl and families attending this event! unlike the horrible cherry blossom festival with like no Japanese people/​families.
So many food vendors, fruit vendors, gift vendors… etc

Props to Simpang Asia (
) for being the winner, the Curry King 2009!
This was my first curry festival and overall, it was a lot of fun! It was held on April 5^th, 2009 alongside the Thai New Year Festival.
At first, it was disappointing. The hot water was cut off around 1PM and all the curry vendors stopped serving food. No samples, no food. We had to wait over an hour for them to fix it. However, when business resumed, it was a curry FEAST!
For $ 4 they provided a Curry King Contest Judge’s Pass of 6 sample tickets to redeem at participating curry vendors and two voting ballots.
I tried Jamaican, Indian, and two Thai curries. I recognized Palms Thai restaurant, whose food has been consistently good. The Jamaican curry vendor had the worst curry. Yuck! I can’t even describe the taste… I felt like Gordon Ramsay on Hell’s Kitchen upon eating unedible food. Time to hurl.
Simpang Asia was my personal favorite and I placed all my votes in their box. They had the longest line for samples/​food purchase and I waited 10 minutes to sample their food. Despite the wait, their curry was the best. Aside from the sample curry, I bought one of their curry croquettes. It was so good! It was $ 2, but who cares when it was a ball of creamy curry goodness.
I expected there to be more curry vendors in the contest as there were many more Thai food vendors at the adjacent Thai New Year Festival.
As for next year, I would come back, but hopefully they don’t have the same technical problems that would delay the curry feast. I would also take the Metro Rail Purple Line (Wilshire/​Western) to the festival next time. Parking was scarce and traffic was horrible on the streets.