By Sahar Foladi
City of Greater Dandenong’s iconic Dandenong Market hosted its first Street Feast on Saturday 30 April following the success of its Night Market.
The Street Feast event attracted foodies nice and early on a sunny cloudy Melbourne day and they enjoyed a selection of the best street food vendors.
The area was filled with a mouth-watering aroma of different cuisines.
There were a range of varieties from tacos, peri peri chicken roti, samosa, fried chicken, panikeke, churros, shakes and much more.
Anthony and Victoria sat enjoying their dessert from Maui’s Polynesian snack bar.
“We started off with something sweet so let’s see how it goes,” Anthony said.
The amazing displays of desserts and bouquet wrapped fries prompted passers-by to stop and ask where people got their food from.
The market buzzed as people travelled from vendor to vendor enjoying the music and the vibe.
The foods at the event were in addition to the 200 cuisines already available in Dandenong Market.
Most of the Street Feast traders, such as Fresh Balkan Bites and Senor Gusto, ran their food trucks and stalls within their families, travelling all over Melbourne each week.
Based in Hallam, Senor Gusto serves Latin American cuisines and is run by six family members.
The head of the family, Michelle Carranza said she loves the support they receive from the community.
“We absolutely love coming to Dandenong Market, the community, the multicultural diversity,” she said.
She runs the business with her husband Rigo Carranza and sometimes brings her whole family down at events like these.
Other food vendors included Victoria’s Best Fried Chicken, Ostrich and the Egg, Maui’s Snack Bar and Churros Ole.
Vendors travel all over Melbourne including rural areas to give a taste of what they have to the communities.
However, almost all of them said Dandenong Market is their favourite location due to its demographic and atmosphere.
Retno from Maui’s Snack Bar said, “This was on our vision board. We always wanted to be here.
“Everyone’s very accepting. I don’t feel competition, we’re all like a family.”
Similar to other vendors, she said the Dandenong community was the most willing to try different foods.
Frank Ruggeri serves freshly cooked churros, dusting of icing sugar and generous amount of chocolate drizzle.
His father and his 72 year-old Argentinian mother, Yolanda, have helped Mr Ruggeri run the business for seven years, cooking fresh churros on the spot.
Casual Retail and Leasing executive, Moni Cullin said the Market welcomes anywhere between 56,000 and 60,000 people on weekends so free community events like these allow families and friends to come together.
“That’s when we often see more than 35,000 visitors in one day,” she said.
“I thought we have such a good relationship with traders, let’s see if we can organise something.
“There’s no entertainment as you can see but we have the sunshine today.
“It’s always nice to see people enjoying themselves.”
Street Feast will run again on Saturday 20 May and while Ms Cullin hopes to continue the tradition at least once a month they may have to call it off occasionally due to the unpredictable Melbourne winter.
“We want to do it monthly until the Night Market. We have such interest from the Night Market that we have a selection of traders to choose from,” Ms Cullin said.
During summer, there’ll be a lot more desserts and drinks on offer.
The whole idea of the event is not only to present the best street food from all corners of the world but to have different traders each time.
