This event was a complete rip-off. It was a battle to get to any table, much less sample the food available. I think I only got try 3 samples (from an advertised 50 vendors) after battling my way around for 2 hours. I saw 2 tables close because they ran out of food by 7:15PM (15 minutes into general admissions!) The coordinators of this event Lucky Rice charged $55/person and made out like bandits. There are so many better food festivals in the city. there is no point to subject yourself to this ridiculous event. Garth -- I am not sure what you ate but the things I tried was not good. All I can think is perhaps Lucky Rice gave journalists the special treatment to hawk this horrid affair.

Place was so Crowded My Wallet Got Nicked within 5 Minutes in the Arch. Some f*ck bought 500 dollars worth of Metrocards at York St. that evening. Plus 200 in cash gone.

I blame the organizers. The archway was like a concentration camp. By the way that "awful smell" was just fish sauce (gamey stuff to be sure). It's unconsionable to call that area a "Market". It was like wartime food relief. Nothing like thumping music to top off the unholy chaos.

The food was generally bland and boring. No bold flavors, no inventiveness. the best thing i ate was a potato chip, mayonaisse and shirachi-topped hot dog. And I had to pay for it. (Ok the tacos were good...and i had a nice lavendar lassi) But come on! I must have seen 20 different dumplings. Limited spice. Limited wow.

Sake was good.

Long line indeed, stellar fare? far from it...
got there a bit past 7 and the place already felt like a jumanji movie on steroids..
be prepared to wait... first to get in, next.. to walk through the crowds to the desired stalls, then to get samples or rather.. ahem, pay for samples.. this was a bit hard to comprehend esp. since the ticket price was already $60.

the malaysian stalls were serving miniature version of the free food samples.. to get the regular sample size, one would mostly have to pay at the malaysian stalls. The other stalls under the archway were serving free samples but ONLY up to 8pm. this is outrageous esp. given all the wait. the Rhong Tiam stall had 8 people surrounding the prep table but was only dishing out one banh mi roll every 40 secs or so. So go figure... the average wait time was probably about 5 min per stall.

all in all, i probably tried up to 6 stalls .. and then decided to pay for a bowl of noodles because i was too tired and hungry to wait in line for the free samples by then. I'm not looking to get my $60 worth of food, but at least $20.. but even so, i doubt i got my $20's worth.

i didn't get to try the korean truck, danji.. but everyone was raving about it, so i may try that one day. while I also didn't try baoguette and Spot Dessert at the festival.. i have been to both places, and would give them two thumbs up! And the best thing about baoguette? the beef bao is only $7-8 but taste totally amazing!!

Lessons learned for next time? yep, lilgnat12 got it right.. we would have been better off going to chinatown (or even k-town) .. for a sumptuous meal esp. for a big group. One may argue that for $60 we get to try samples from the various restaurants.. but really, for $60? With the wait, and the non so stellar samples or lack of samples?? There is always Yelp,... thanks goodness!

This event is a RIP OFF!
First, you cannot possibly fit 500+ people in that space, so why sell so many tickets.
Second, the stalls don't have enough food and most of them ran out by 8pm. That's one hour in! Where is your planning?
Third, the place is so incredibly packed and there is no crowd control, so it's actually dangerous.

The people who worked there are clueless (told me there was no drinks include). And why was the checkin line around the block? How slow can you hand out the red hand band? (wait time for me at 7pm was 35 min)

And then by 8pm, a lot of the booths just start selling their food. Why is that even allowed?

I have been to several food events like this, and Lucky Rice is by far the WORST. The Meat Packing event last year was so packed you can't even get in. You guys need to find a bigger space, sell less tickets and have better food. I know it's for City Harvest, but I'd rather donate the money directly and not waste my time. I had exactly 3 small bite of food. It's not a night market, it's more like a refugee camp.

I am not even asking for $60 worth of food. I would like a $5 return and I'll be happy. Didn't even get that.

Count me and my friends in along with everyone else who didn't think they got their money's worth. Most of the vendors we approached were very keen on selling their wares as opposed to offering a sample tasting, with quite a few stating outright that they were not offering samples. Maybe we misunderstood the event, but we had assumed that this was a chance to sample tastings from the participating businesses. I wouldn't have minded purchasing the food if the vendors had seemed interested in allowing folks to sample before purchasing.

Add in the general annoyance about overcrowding -- why do organizers always oversell their events??? -- the overall feel of the night was that it was a big rip off. I think we would have been better off if we each took our money, donated $40 directly to City Harvest and spent the remaining for a blow out in one of the Flushing's food courts.

Yes there was an open bar, but honestly the drinks weren't that great and given that this was a FOOD event, I had hoped for more food and less drinks.

piat piat, you and your firends were robbed. You could have pooled the $600-660 and eaten at every restaurant in Chinatown in style!

Now on to my review...
To pay $60 to wait in line for 20-30mins for barely there food (assuming it is still available and free) is out of line to say the least.

The redeeming factors for me were the free beers and the Korean porkbelly slider truck with chef DanJi. It was organized, informative, and delicious! I will definitely be looking for his truck.

Also kudos to the Malaysian section. I am not sure why the Malaysian section was separated but it had a much more authentic night market feel. The vendors and the chefs were more engaging and it didn't feel as much like an assembly line. Unfortunately having already shelled out $60, I couldn't justify paying $5 for Nasim Lamak (as delicious as it looked).

Perhaps if the entrance charge was lowered to $10, then I wouldn't have minded paying a little extra.

I will just chalk this experience up as a lesson learned.

I agreed with Piat Piat. At least you and your friends are lucky enough not getting suckered buying the VIP tickets like us. By the time we decided to go the regular admission tickets are sold out. We paid over $200 for VIP tickets. This event is definitely over-hyped. Not all the food for sales has samples. We would like to try the laksa from Fatty Crab but they are only for sale and no samples. We thought VIP tickets entitled you to sample everything in small portions? We were there early (well before 6pm for the VIP event) and among the first entered but the place is over-packed. We definitely do not feel like a VIP at all. The participants were slow to put out samples. We even have to ask the participants for samples when they are more interested in pushing us to buy their food. We think the ticket price is a huge rip-off since we are not big drinkers. For the price we paid, this event was a huge disappointment. As we were leaving at 7:30pm, we saw a huge line of people trying to get in. We were thinking of selling our VIP wristbands to the people in line so we can recuperate the money we spend on the tickets. Maybe we came in with too high of an expectation. We will most probably not go there again next year.

Went to Night Market and had a mixed time.

The Good - relaxed and fun atmosphere and crowd. Some booths had some really excellent food. Drinking room - great sake variety, wine [Clear Slate], beer [Singha] and Bombay Sapphire Gin drinks.

The Bad - the Archway area had a horrible smell [from the sewers or ocean] that was almost vomit-inducing. The cramped space lead to major crowding issues. Lots of similar foods [i.e. pieces of meat on a stick]. Annoying foodies who created traffic jams at the various booths by taking photos of the food and sometimes the chefs, instead of moving along like considerate people. I don't think I got my $60 worth of food and drink. Definitely like the Village Voice tasting better, totally miss the now defunct Time Out NY tasting.

Theme and general atmosphere was good. Food on the other hand....not so much. I expected better, some of the food samples were great like the Korean truck Danji and Social Eatz. These are venues that I'd be happy to seek and find and try again. Others were down right horrible and had to toss the samples out (it's polite to not mention names).

Big annoyance, at the peak of the event (8/9 PM), some of the restaurants stop serving samples and pushed for event goers to purchase their food (ranging from 3 to 5 dollars)....tsk tsk. At the end of the night my friends and I (group of 11), walked away feeling very unsatisfied and difficult to justify the $60 we paid to get in (one caveat is that if you drank a lot last night then it's completely worth the $60, however, given that this was a food event, I was less interested in the drinks). The one thing that makes me feel somewhat satisfied...but not really...is that proceeds go to Harvest City. Although I do wonder what % of proceeds after what expense will go to them.

All in all, glad I went however it's not anything that I would go again or recommend.