Good news for anyone who spent the Fourth grilling the same three burgers. The long weekend is nearly spent, and your window for a real blowout meal is closing by the hour. Enter FoodieLand, back at the Rose Bowl for one last Sunday before it packs up for the year.
More than 200 vendors line the Arroyo, which means you can graze from Adelitas’ raspados and aguas frescas to Yakitori Yado’s skewers to a cold cone at Hawaiian Honey Cones without repeating yourself once. Save room: Elaine’s Bread Pudding, The Kobbler King, and Rosella’s Gold Crunch cover the grab-and-go sweets, and there’s Italian cheesewall pasta if you want dinner with a little theater. Between bites, browse the makers (Kawaii Klaws for charms, Tee No Evil for shirts), lose a round at the carnival games, and catch the live music.
This is no first rodeo. FoodieLand got its start in Berkeley in 2019 and now bills itself as the country’s biggest food-festival producer, national tour and all, run out of a home office over in Monrovia. Last October it bought the 626 Night Market, the San Gabriel Valley’s own Asian-food institution, so the crew setting up in the Arroyo knows exactly whose backyard this is.
The map is wide. Mexican, South American, Japanese, Korean, Asian fusion, all elbowing for room across more than 200 stalls. That’s how Master Dimsum and Banana Mama end up a few tents apart, and how a plan to grab one thing becomes a slow two-hour lap. Pace yourself. The line that looks worst usually pays best.
One housekeeping note, because the Rose Bowl runs a tight ship. Parking’s free across Lots F, H and I, with entrances off Seco Street, Rosemont Avenue and Arroyo Boulevard — just leave the cooler, the skateboard and the big backpack at home, since none of them make it past security. There’s no re-entry, so make the single trip count. Then stake out a patch of grass as the Arroyo cools and the San Gabriels turn gold, and savor it: this is the last Sunday here until next summer.
Tickets run $12, kids 5 and under get in free, and parking across Lots F, H and I costs nothing. Gates run 1 to 10 p.m.
Buy on Eventbrite before you leave the house — the door isn’t selling any — and come hungry. Your grill doesn’t need to know.
Rose Bowl Stadium, 1001 Rose Bowl Drive, Pasadena. Sunday, 1–10 p.m. $12, kids 5 and under free, Eventbrite only; free parking in Lots F, H and I. foodielandnm.com
