Last week (Friday) we attended DTLA’s version of the 626 Night Market for the first time. We had signed up for their email listing earlier this year at the Asian American Expo and were notified that we got free tickets to this event so we thought, why not? It’s free entry and a flat rate parking of $6.00 coupon came with it. To be quite honest, I don’t know how anyone living in DTLA gets anywhere on time with all those yielding lights. Making left turns is nearly impossible in a car with all the traffic and pedestrians. It took us almost 40 minutes to move down two blocks. TWO BLOCKS. We finally managed to get to one of the parking structures listed on the coupon and made our way into the event.

This KTown Night Market was held at the LAUSD Robert F. Kennedy community school. It’s a very nice campus, surprisingly not covered in graffiti yet. Entry was easy, we just showed them our ticket via our phone and got our hand stamped for reentry. We walked around for bit and realized it’s actually a much smaller event than we had anticipated. Maybe a little more than a dozen food stalls, a few sections were dedicated to clothing booths and the other half were carnival games. There weren’t that many food and drink options as the area was very small compared to the 626 and OC Night Markets. Many were selling snacks rather than full entree items, there were at least six lamb skewer stalls and 3-4 drink stalls.

We passed by a particularly interesting stall that was selling fresh made bowls of noodles. You can see a man standing there stretching out long lengths of noodles in quick fluid motion before handing it off to the cook. Boyfriend ended up ordering from them and loved every bit of the bowl, the broth was flavorful and the noodles were amazingly tender, perfect in texture and they weren’t overcooked. It also had these nice slices of beef on top for a little more savory goodness.

I ordered from Caanan Restaurant, a Taiwanese establishment that was selling rather cold looking items like grilled chicken breast, sausage, gyoza, green onion pancake, chow mein and a few other items. Ordered three items: grilled chicken, one sausage, and a side of green onion pancake for the boyfriend for $7.00 which is actually a really good price for a night market stall. With that being said, the food itself wasn’t that great, the chicken was absolutely flavorless and boyfriend didn’t quite enjoy the green onion pancake either due to being too soggy from sitting out. We were a little disappointed with the quality of the food. We also got iced green teas from Honey & Milk that weren’t that memorable, although helped in the summer heat of the situation.

I did purchase some really delicious Ocean Snack: Seaweed Crisps as finger food. It’s roasted seaweed sandwiching a layer of almonds and sesame seeds. It was very good and healthier snack than what other stalls were selling. I wish I had purchased more when I was there as when I went home to check online they’re much more expensive than I had anticipated.

We ate our food then walked around and spent some money playing games that we all lost at and left as there wasn’t much else to do. The event was very family friendly, no beer or alcoholic drinks were allowed to be sold (we assumed it was because it was on a high school campus) and all the music and theme choices were geared towards children.

In the end it wasn’t really my cup of tea, there wasn’t much to try out and everything else (music selection, choice of ‘celebrity’ cameos, etc.) wasn’t all that interesting either. The effort trying to get here just wasn’t really worth it in my opinion, but it was worth a first time experience, I would just rather stick with the 626 Night Market. Although I hear KTown Night Market is hosting another one end of July at LA Live which means a much bigger venue and it looks like the vendor list seems much more vast than the event I attended.

Check out the rest of the adventure here!: KTown Night Market