We first visited Bastille Day celebration last year in 2016, and had a super fun time at their Champagne and Chocolate Tasting event (you can read about it here: http://www.foodlovergirl.com/bastille-day-festival/). Bastille Day, also known as French National Day, is a holiday celebrating the beginning of the French Revolution and the Storming of the Bastille. This year, we decided to try some of the food from the vendors.
They always have so many yummy looking things, but the cutest one I found were these macarons! My goodness, look at them! I didn’t get any (sadly) but they were really adorable.
What is not adorable is the amount of people at this street fair… Great thing about these annual fair is that you get to go every year, but then, a bad thing is that more people find out about it each year, and the crowd grows year after year… And not everyone who is there has common sense or respect for others in super crowded space. We saw several double strollers being pushed through, which was really not the best thing to have at an event like this. Come on guys…
Anyways, back to the food. They had a few samples that you could taste, only if you could get to the front of line. The best sample of the day (in my opinion) was Häagen-Dazs ice cream! The line to get to this was long, but it was worth it! We got a free strawberry ice cream, and yes it was awesome!
It was time for us to have a real food, so we walked from the beginning of the fair to the end. It goes for three blocks from 5th Avenue to Lexington Avenue, and each block had very similar offerings – crepes, macarons, baked goods. We finally decided to get some French fries from Pommes Frites. The funny thing was, the staffs were all Asian! This is NYC… They also had some drinks, including the light bulb cup that is becoming quite popular.
We went with Parmesan Cheese Frites ($8) and it came with pretty good amount of fries. They had a small stand with different sauces, like Sweet Chili Mayo, Sriracha Mayo, and Ketchup. We liked the Sriracha Mayo the best. The fries were soft and potato-y, with really nice parmesan flavor. It was a nice size to share among us two, it was delicious and very satisfying.
After that, we wanted something sweet. And how can we leave the French celebration without getting a crepe? Out of all the crepes tents, we went with Très Bon French Crêpes. They had sweet and savory crepes, but we wanted something sweet, so we chose Strawberry, Chocolate & Banana Crepe ($9.00).
The staff who was making our crepe asked if we wanted chocolate or Nutella, and we chose Nutella. The crepe was big and was filled with sweet goodness. They sprinkled powder sugar and it was done. They had a can of whipped cream on their counter, so I put a good amount of that on top. It didn’t have as much strawberries and bananas as it showed on their counter, but it was pretty good. Not amazing but it certainly hit the spot.
We had fun at Bastille Day street fair, but it was just way too crowded, especially with those double strollers… I am not sure if I will go next year and wrestle through the crowds… Street fair is fun, but when it gets over crowded, it can become more tiring than fun. It was more enjoyable to attend one of their other events like Champagne and Chocolate Tasting, and then walk through the street fair for just a little bit. Maybe that is what we will do again next year…
Bastille Day – 60th Street between Lexington Avenue and Fifth Avenue