SF Underground Market – SOMA

This post was written by Eva

When I think of “underground”, I think of it being on the “DL”, “hush-hush”, an event just a select few only know about. So, when I was invited to this SF Underground Market in the SOMA, presented by Forage SF, I guess I was expecting something totally different. My take on “underground” was wrong altogether as the “underground” aspect was more to do with these aspiring, passionate food vendors not having legitimate business licenses rather than not being in the know of the events existence. This underground market takes place once a month in a select location in San Francisco and in Oakland.

I attended the one in the SOMA (off 8th Street and Brannan Street), where as of recent, seems to frequent. There seems to be two parts to this all day event. First part begins during the day from 11am – 4pm then part two from 6pm – 12am. In between time is when day vendors pack up and new vendors set up. It was a great way to get as many vendors in, I thought. Although we arrived around 8:30pm, I was surprised to see that it was still fairly packed. We were pleasantly greeted by a lady sitting at her little table set up, paid our $5 cover and walked in to a crowd of people enjoying  live music, conversation, food, and beverage as they either mingled or waited patiently in line for their next foodie experience.

Being that there was an overwhelming crowd outside as well as inside, we decided to come up with a game plan on how we’d hit up all these amazing booths.  We walked about the entire venue, starting from the outside booths and made our way into the booths inside. Those that we were interested to try we went for according to how popular they seemed to be, how much food they had left to serve as well as originality and appeal.

Here are just a few of the vendors we came across that made it to our “MUST TRY” list:

• Sataysfied
• Macaron Shop
• AngryManEats
• Bake it Banana
• Cocotutti
• “Almost Better Than Sex” Cake
• GrilledCheezGuy
• The Only Cookie
• LelaJays
• Bacon Wrapped Mochi