Stroll & Savor on Second Street

Location: Downtown Long Beach

Entertainment Cost: Free

Food Cost: $1 per ticket or $10 for 12 tickets

     

Have you stood in front of two restaurants and couldn't decide which one to go? Italian or Japanese? Greek or Indian? What if you could have both? Even better, how about if you can have it all...all for one third of the price of a dinner outing? Look no further, because that is what the Downtown Stroll and Savor allows the fickle food lover to do. It's like having your cake and eating it too!!

Luckily I've have had many years of Costco Sunday Sample training so I knew instinctively that I would have to wait my turn amidst the eager and hungry crowd while keeping a keen eye on the trend of the lines--my experienced sonar tracked down time and again all the you just-gotta-wait lines.

Once we bought our tickets, we were given a map

of the 20 or so different restaurants that were displaying their signature samples on their front porch. In addition to the ethnicalicious food vendors saturated across the 14 block outdoor promenade, the trek towards our favorite palate pleasers allowed us to also appreciate the diverse array of boutiques, coffee shops, and speciality stores. From bougie women wear such as Jennys and Heavenly Couture to high fashioned candy shops like Frost, Powell's Sweet Shop, Yogurtland, Pinkberry, to eccentric specialties such as Party Props, Storyteller Productions, Pussy and Pooch-- a Juicy Couture equivalent of a pet store for dogs and cats, its like a hodgepodge of liberal creativity for the hipster.

As diverse as the food and the shops were, the crowd was just as mixed as the United Nations. It was heartwarming to know that I live in a city where diversity is the status quo, that the locals all seem to interact with each other, bustling with kindred spirit of commercialism. When it came to entertainment, it was still a bit shy from the hustle of Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, but it did have its few moments of street blues in the form of New world tunes and good old strumming on familiar guitar strings. There was even a makeshift food court with the family centered music and dancing. It was altogether a homely feel--like having a warm cup of cocoa in a San Francisco coffee shop.

 

We sampled Pad Thai, Lucille's hot links, bar bred hot wings, NY pizza, Peat's fusion teas, Yogurtland, Chuck and Toby's 1 ticket Tacos and by the time we were contemplating Lebanese and Greek, we were already stuffed at full capacity. The four of us (Lisa, Kathy, Gus, and I) each bought our own tickets and five minutes before the end of the street fair (6:00pm-9:00pm), we were all loosening our pants with altogether five tickets left to spare. We took home a meal sized doggy bag full of leftovers from random places we hadn't visited.

If you haven't experienced downtown Long Beach, you would definitely miss out if you overlook this underrated promenade. Compared with the more famous Santa Monica Promenade, I would say it is comparatively better in food selections and shop eccentricities. Though there could be more improvement on the street entertainers, there is plenty of food sampling opportunities to make up for that. The Stroll and Savor fair only happens twice a month, so be sure to open your mouth and your minds to the Belmont Shore Stroll and Savor when the time calls for you.