Austin Street Fall Festival

So Saturday night was Arjun’s big graduation party at a restaurant called Cotillion in Jericho. It was really fun – lots of dancing, drinking, and meeting all of Arjun’s friends from college. But we didn’t get home til past 3am, so Sunday morning was kind of a rough start. Mid-day, we decided to take a walk to Dunkin Donuts to get some coffee. When we got to Austin Street, we noticed they were having their Austin Fall Street Fair/Festival so decided to check it out. So glad we did! It was three blocked off streets of different types of food, live music, jewelry, paintings, etc.

There was so much yummy-looking street food that we wanted to try, but we made our entire rounds before we settled on the few places we’d get stuff from. There were a lot of non-food vendors:

I didn’t realize people still bought beanie babies?

We spun the wheel and won free chips and salsa, a free soft drink, and free dessert!

But there were a LOT of food/drink vendors:

Fried bananas with some creamy like filling?

We finally settled on sharing some Jerk Chicken. The chicken was AMAZING. I wasn’t going to suggest we get it because it didn’t look as appetizing as some of the other chicken we saw. But Jeej was pretty set on it and he knows meat more than I do, so I trusted him. It was INCREDIBLE. So much so that we went around back of the tent and complemented the chef. He said that he marinates the chicken overnight in a mixture of spices and their restaurant’s special jerk sauce. But that he pokes a hole through the entire chicken so that it’s all soaked up in that wonderful sauce. To quote Arjun, “I would bathe in that sauce.” But Arjun became friends with the guy (he somehow always does because he talks to anyone and everyone). And the guy gave him an entire take-out container of the chicken and said, “Since you like it so much, it’s yours.” Pays to complement the chef, I guess!

The picture definitely does not do justice to how tasty this chicken was

Devouring the chicken, licking our fingers. YUM.

We also shared two smoothies because it was H-O-T outside and needed something to keep us cool:

What a coincidence. The straws were the same color as Bhanu’s socks. Not quite sure why he was wearing bright neon green and orange socks….

Don’t mind the sweat dripping from our faces. It was hot and HUMID out!

There was live music on one of the side streets with hundreds of chairs and tables set up for people to watch.

Behind the stage

Sister and I were craving some diet Pepsi (yes, sometimes these cravings hit us as though we are pregnant women). So, we found the closest restaurant (Pizzeria Uno!) that served Diet Pepsi (not Diet Coke), but then walked over to Duane Reade to buy Sister some Minute Maid Pink Lemonade (read her post to see the concoction she creates called P-Splash). We realized, however, that it was more of a sit-down restaurant and less of a grab-and-go kind of place. But we were determined, so we got a table and ordered a pizza that we were going to take home for the moms/dads/uncles/aunts to share.