MNYK

     On Saturday I attended the first ever strEAT Food Festival in Manayunk.  It was a creative way to kick off  Restaurant Week in the once independent borough.  Manayunk (known to locals as MNYK) was formerly called Flat Rock due to it's proximity to the Schuylkill River.  The name was changed by the residents in 1824 adapting the Lenape Indian name of manaiung meaning "place where we go to drink."  (That is even more true now than then!)

     The area was first settled by immigrants from England, Ireland, Italy and Poland and was a primarily working class community.  There are still several ethnic Roman Catholic parishes there that reflect distinct national identities.  Manayunk lays claim to the construction of the first canal in the United States and is part of a 108 mile navigation system that stretches from the tidewater in Fairmount to the coal fields of Mount Carbon in Schuylkill County.  Along the waterway mills were constructed to utilize the available hydraulic power to operate machinery.  The town thrived and was incorporated as a borough in 1840, only to be consolidated into the much larger neighboring city of Philadelphia fourteen years later.

     But by the mid-twentieth Century industry had declined and the once thriving community had fallen on hard times.  It was in the decade of the 1980's that the gentrification of Manayunk began and the old mills were converted into high end loft apartments and Main Street became home to numerous one-of-a-kind shops and restaurants that attracted a younger crowd of college students and urban professionals.  Available public transit and its proximity to Center City made it a desirable place to live and work.

     That, by way of introduction, is how the first (annual?) strEAT Food Festival came into being.  It wasn't a particularly nice day for the event.  It was slightly chilly and overcast.  But that did not deter the crowd from descending onto Main Street.  Perhaps the main attraction (no pun intended) was the presence of 20 food trucks of various size and cuisine.  And unlike the Mushroom Festival in Kennett Square, the Manayunk festival actually followed a theme.  There were practically no extraneous vendors present and the emphasis was on food, apples in particular.  It was an enjoyable afternoon strolling along Main Street, which by the way, was kept open to traffic the entire time.  I sampled several offerings from the festively decorated food trucks and had a good time chatting with others.

     Here are just a few of the food trucks at the event: