Rice Fest

Ric's- short attention span review:2017 was their 8th annual festival.Small in terms of what one would expect of a festival.Mostly food trucks, snacks with a sprinkling of service booths with information. (Yelp had their booth, yay!)There was a small entertainment stage area on the mauka side of the fest. Auahi street was blocked off roughly from between Nordstrom Rack and Agu Ramen.Area was really packed, hard to maneuver. No place to sit and eat in the fest. footprint. Most people ate standing up or took their goodies and sat by the Nordstrom/TJ Max area. A little more space with a couple of portable tables and benches would have been nice. Most interesting food offering: the pineapple fried rice with shrimp topping. A half pineapple boat stuffed with fried rice and topped with shrimp. Big enough for two, $13. Not a festival I would go out of my way for. But if in the area, why not?

Parking was horrendous, we spent maybe 20 minutes circling around the parking garage floors before we got lucky. At least it was free.Rice fest was set for 3-9 pm. We arrived around 5 ish & it was still dreadfully hot. Dozens of vendors were there so I was excited to explore, it was pretty lively with entertainment and games to support Meals on wheels. Some vendors accepted card purchases & some were cash only...luckily I had a $20 What's disappointing was a few booths had "sold out" signs & it was only 5 pm. My favorite booths: I can't recall the name but it's the booth with rolled ice cream? The strawberry mochi was amazing!!! The horchata ice cream was yummy too & im usually not a fan of the drink. Lines were long for the corn booth, I got the Mexican corn & it was delicious! Corn came from the bulk packs you get from Costco. We got our BBQ plate at Chamorro grindz around 6 ish & they ran out of their signature red rice, definite bummer. If I knew before I ordered, it would have definitely impacted my decision to eat there. Kelaguen was good, BBQ ribs were ok.Ulu's lemonade: refreshing as always. Favorites are rob's special (favorite?) and blue hawaii. To be completely honest, I don't know if I'll return next year. This was my first year and it was just way too hot and pricey. Major plus was there were dozens of dogs, win!!!

Rice fest 2017 was sort of a bust. It was super hot and lots of people and vendor's running out of food so quickly. I liked the location but i think they need a bigger area and additional vendor's. I was able to get some amazing brisket fried rice that was absolutely awesome. The kids playing the ukulele and singing were adorable, they were the hit of the rice fest. Of course it was nice to stop by the yelp booth and pick up free yelp stuff...thank you yelp.

For a festival with RICE in the name, one would expect more rice based dishes and rice centered activities going on. Not to say that this 'festival' for lack of better word isn't worth going to, but it's little more than "Eat The Street" on another day with live music. There were around a dozen food vendors, significantly more than 2016 (7th annual) year's festival, with the Lanakila Meals on Wheels donation tent, a few clothing/good venders, and the yelp check in tent. Like last year's festival, there was a stage for live music, cooking competitions, eating competition, and other performances. The festival itself was located on a section of the Auahi street that was entirely blocked off between Agu Ramen and the TJ Maxx parking entrance. Parking is available in the TJ Maxx and Ward Center parking lots with various street parking. Parking got scarce with the huge crowd all trying to find a spot in addition to the regular Ward crowd. Bathroom facilities were located in Ward Center or South Shore Market. A number of cops were on the scene if security is an issue to you. The 2017 (8th annual) thankfully moved its times to 3 PM - 9 PM avoiding most of the brutally hot afternoon that was the 2016 festival. The dinner crowd around 6:00 PM was out in force making it hard to move through the crowd with substantial lines on various booths. There were a few tables spread out, but no chairs provided. Lots of attendees either sat down on the curb, or ate standing. Food this year was supposed to be rice centric, but there was a still large amount of non-rice based dishes of ethnically Mexican, American Fusion, shave ice, poi mochi balls, etc. Mega-Loaded Burgers did say they weren't allowed to sell their burger dishes due to the rice theme despite their menu hawking them. Rice dishes did include sushi bowls, shrimp/chicken served over fried rice in a pineapple bowl, Thai, Chamorro, and Filipino food. La Roux food truck had a novel rice dish of a waffle cone filled with rice and mochiko chicken with either a sweet chili or a honey BBQ sauce that I ordered. That was interesting, but the combination of waffle and rice left me feeling that I should have gotten their loaded fries that came with a lot more of their tasty chicken and none of the rice. Food booths started to run out of items around 6 PM. I'd say this was better than the 2016 festival, but questionable if worth fighting the crowds or parking. It's a good choice if you can get dropped off early and you're in the area already, but not something to go out of your way to visit. One last thing, this is dog friendly and dozens of dogs including the adorable shiba inu pack came out.

Since it seemed like a fun event to go to, we decided to give it a try. Lots of folks there and surprisingly we found parking pretty easily. Selection of vendors was okay and there was entertainment as well. We tried all sorts of various dishes (beef bulgolgi and braised short ribs.. sorry the pics did not come out for those items.... :-( ) and a an ice cream dessert which was pretty good! Pet friendly as well!

Rice Fest [RF]. (3 stars)."Rice, rice baby.Rice, rice baby." - Weird Al YankovicI ask myself over and over again whether my mind and my body were somehow haphazardly put together in the back alley by Dr. Frankenstein.Note #1: I am 100% Asian. Japanese and Korean, although who knows what else could be lurking in my jeans... oh wait, I meant genes! :)I do not crave rice. I do not necessarily like rice. I could probably go the rest of my life (with the exception of KBBQ) without eating rice.Truth be told without the Rice Fest sign I would have never guessed that rice was supposed to be the star of the festival.I just don't get the love affair Hawaii, in particular, has with rice??!! Before anyone sends me comments, I have lived in Hawaii forever it seems. Between Kauai and Oahu, with a few months here and there on the mainland.My family all live in Hawaii and have for their entire lives as well.Everyone around me including the BF all love rice and think I'm the weird one.I agree!! I am weird.Fast Forward to Rice Fest 2017...I had never heard of Rice Fest but saw some friends checking in so I asked the BF if he would be interested in going. He said sure as we had just finished a long day at work.As we arrived at Rice Fest (on Auahi Street) we noticed a few food trucks and vendors selling plate lunches and other various goods.As we started heading down the street we saw the Yelp Booth and center stage where the volunteers were asking people to sign up for the 3 eating contests of the evening:1) Poke Bowl (@1830)2) Loco Moco (@1930)3) Musubi (@2030)Note #2: The contest is FREE!There is a waiver to sign and honestly it was so long I didn't even bother reading it! I just signed my life away!The BF and I signed up for the Poke Bowl eating contest mostly because I had never done one before and I heart Poke.Stupid me didn't bother to ask if the Poke was fresh (I refuse to eat frozen Poke) or what type of Poke would be offered as I DESPISE ONIONS.I'm sure adrenaline and adult beverages from earlier didn't help the aging brain!!So with an arrogant swagger we all walked onto the stage as our names were called. There were 10 of us competing for... well honestly I have no clue as to what the prize was since I didn't bother to read the waiver. ;)As I looked down at the 2 Poke bowls we were supposed to eat, my heart sank! There was a bowl of Ahi Shoyu Poke and a bowl of Spicy Ahi Poke.I saw these despicable things called onions!! I heart scallions but despise all other onions! So, imagine my horror as I hear the MC say, "3, 2, 1... GO!"I removed the cover from the Ahi Shoyu Poke Bowl and started to shovel the slimy oniony fish into my mouth and turned around as I tried my hardest not to hurl...I'm sure to most people, thick chunks of onions mixed into the Poke Bowl sounds delicious, but not to me.I never even got to the Spicy Ahi Poke bowl...After approximately 2 minutes and 9 seconds had elapsed, a winner was crowned.Thank goodness as I couldn't shovel any more food into my mouth.I can't say I regret the experience or that I blame the sponsors in any way. I have nothing against Pā'ina Cafe, I'm just an extremely picky eater especially when it comes to Poke!!It was a fun and exhilarating experience which apparently was caught on video... LOL!---All in all, it was an interesting experience but I wouldn't go out of my way to find parking or deal with the traffic.

It's ok. A few vendors, lots of crowds, difficult parking. My son got a free drink so that was cool.We walked through because we happened to be at the ward center for something else . Not worth a special trip.

The variety of food to choose from was very good, sprinkled with some vendors and public service giveaways. The venue was a bit overwhelmed with the space allotted. There was room for the Organizers to put the stage at the end of the venue but they put it in with the food booths which made it hard to get to the food booths on the far side of the stage.They had local musical entertainment and some eating contests which were both great. There was good parking availability. I don't think parking should be part of a Yelp rating so although there was an abundance of parking, that big plus is not part of this rating. I focused on the variety and quality of and the entertainment. This fair was good for families too except navigating strollers would have been tough.

Fun celebration of one of my favorite foods! We popped about an hour after it started and there was no nearby parking. So we ended up having to park in Ala Moana and take a short walk over (which was totally fine). Sounds like there were a few more vendors than last year, which is great! I think living in New Orleans has really spoiled us on festivals and we were expecting a few more tents and more rice-centric food items. Additionally, not all vendors took credit card, which turned out to be our limiting factor since we usually don't carry cash. We ended up getting a great rice dish from Sabaii, some bubble tea, a musubi, and some hand towels with fun rice-related content for the house. All in all, it was a fun ~30 minutes, but we probably wouldn't go if we weren't already in town. I'm sure this event will continue to get bigger and bigger, which is super exciting! It's a lovely idea and supports a wonderful cause (Lanakila Meals on Wheels).

Easy location being in one half of the open parking lot across from Ward theatre. It was awkward with the other half of the lot still open to vehicle traffic, though. Too much confusion with foot traffic and vehicles trying to get in/out the lot.Good selection of food trucks; Fried Musubi, Soul Patrol, Thai Spice Shack, Onto Pops, Paul's Poppers, and a few more. I got an awesome sushi roll plate from Rolls & Bowls, ono! The entertainment was good, I liked how they mixed the lineup alternating music and cooking demo, repeat. I was a little disappointed that there was no signage for the station where the Guinness musubi was supposed to be. I'm fairly sure I figured it out, though after being there for 2 hours and not really much to see/do other than food trucks, I was ready to leave. I had really wanted to see the 600+ pound monster but it was hot and the kids were already bored and I didn't need to do any shopping. I was glad I went so I can say that I've experienced the rice festival BUT the term festival tends to imply that there is more going on than was actually there.Made my donation to Lanakila Pacific's "Meals on Wheels" so my karma is good for today :)