After a long day of sipping wine and nibbling on mostly chocolate at the Oregon Bounty Grand Tasting, Feast’s Night Market event kicked off under the glow of Tilikum Crossing. The unofficial theme of the evening was “early bird gets the snack” as lines quickly began to snake in and around the booths as people scrambled to get treats from some of country’s buzziest chefs.

One spot that surprisingly didn’t have a long line for most of the evening was Seattle’s Rachel Yang. She was repping Joule (she also owns Revel and Trove) and serving a spicy blood sausage with salted shrimp sauce and garlic chive kimchi. It was a bite so nice I ate it twice, and had to restrain myself from going back for thirds.

Predictably, the buzz around LA’s Top Chef darling Mei Lin’s booth—situated in sort of a female power corner that included Smallwares’ Johanna Ware and Kachka’s Bonnie Morales—created a line that wove in and out and around, causing some good conversation as people found out they suddenly weren’t in the line they thought at first. Of course, there was no wrong line; Lin had pork belly pate egg rolls, Ware served up a Sichuan cumin lamb salad and Morales had pillowy lamb pelmini.

Mei Lins pork belly pate egg rolls
  • Mei Lin's pork belly pate egg rolls

Despite that trio of goodness, not everything worked 100 percent. At some booths it seemed they took on the idea “more was better,” when it most definitely wasn’t. Fine, give me beef tongue—but it doesn’t necessarily need roasted bone marrow aioli, crisped rice, pickled onion and tomato.

The setup of things on things on things made running into the tomato su at from Ryan Roadhouse at Nodoguro, and the octopus and tomato consommé from Toro Bravo’s John Gorham especially refreshing.

Overall, the thumping music, bonhomie in the lines and free flowing booze made even the most confusing bites worth it.

John Gorhams tomato consommé
  • John Gorham's tomato consommé

Ryan Roadhouse tomato su
  • Ryan Roadhouse' tomato su