Atlanta Underground Market - Review

After much anticipation and excitement, we received the "secret" email instructions on Friday, and headed out to the first annual Atlanta Underground Market with Stacy and Chris on Saturday evening at 6pm.

The secret location ended up being downtown at the Sweet Auburn Curb Market off of Edgewood Ave. near Grady Hospital. A beautiful, historic building that housed a curb market in the 1920s after WWI and has since been restored to host a daily market of food vendors and small restaurants.

We drove up to the event at right about 6pm, and there was already a line around the building.  I knew that over 1500 people had signed up for the event, and with such great weather outside, I'm sure right about 1500 people attended.  We quickly jumped in line and proceeded to wait over an hour and a half to get inside (see photo below).  It was torture every time we passed a window and saw people enjoying the delicious looking dishes inside while we were outside in line. Our only hope was that waiting in the slow moving, long line would mean no (or shorter) waits by the time we got inside... we were mistaken.

They had originally asked everyone to sign up, because they were going to check everyone in person by person (!), by the time we reached that checkpoint- they had obviously given up hope of checking everyone in. Once we reached the door to pay the $2 entry fee, we were once again greeted by dis-organization with one (yes, one person) counting out change to each attendee.

Finally we had arrived inside! A pretty small space considering the permanent vendor booths were still there, and each event vendor had to set up in front of those spaces.  We wandered around hungry and thirsty bumping into people, trying to peer over shoulders to figure out what people were selling, and getting very frustrated when vendors were quickly selling out of food.

After jumping in line in a random booth (we couldn't see what anyone was selling), we ordered some bready thing with cheese, chickpeas, and curry chicken.  We were too hungry to stay and converse about what he was serving so we just pointed to some dishes and quickly handed him our money so we could eat.  I also grabbed a 6oz water from another vendor for $1 and a 6oz kenari for $2 (!). We were finally starting to get less grumpy from hunger, and ventured around to a few other long-lined booths.  We ended up trying some pecan butter sammies (sandwiches), apple pie turnovers, spicy sweet potato soup with chocolate bacon bits (photo above-the best dish by far of the night), vegan enchiladas (photo below), and lastly a chocolate sea salt king of pops popsicle (soooo good!). Thanks Stacy for the pics! Check out her take of the event on her blog: StacyEats

The food overall was pretty good, but I think the biggest disappointment was the lack of information.  There were a number of vendors there, but we had no idea who was serving what - and our impatience hindered us from seeing what a lot of vendors had to offer. It was difficult to see past the throng of people surrounding each booth to see the small 5x7 picture frame on the tables with the dish choice. A few vendors had signs hanging up overhead, but for the most part you had to wait 5+ minutes to even see what they were cooking. For an event expecting 1500+ people, there seemed to be only about 30-40 vendors (and some were very hidden) who were unprepared for the crowd.  Some had only one small hot plate with one small pot cooking! Out of all those vendors, there seemed to be too many dessert options, hardly any drink options (no alcohol-sold out in the first 30 minutes), and not a lot of protein-inspired plates.

Another disappointment was the lack of unique dishes. Cory and I have attended a few tastings and similar events, and there are always crazy or different dishes that I would typically never try.  Maybe since this event was a "pay-per-plate",  the vendors weren't very adventurous in their dish selection. Or perhaps it was because there were not a whole lot of local restaurants as vendors- the booths seemed to be more caterers, personal chefs, or just foodies.  We ended up paying over $40 (entry + dishes) for a long wait and few dishes that really jumped out at us.

Maybe we went into the event with the wrong assumptions of what it was going to offer.  Regardless, I hope next year they can work out all of their kinks, as I think this has the potential to be really great, annual event (or even seasonal). For next time, please have it in a larger space, with more food options, better organization, and lots of drinks!!