A FiPS Guide to Great GoogaMooga Fooda

It's Great GoogaMooga week, bitches! To prepare you for the upcoming 2-day food, wine and music orgy festival, we here at FiPS are going to be talking about it nonstop from now 'til Saturday.

Yeah, motherfucker! Are you ready to stuff your face, GoogaMooga style? Good luck with that. If you're spending next weekend at the Great GoogaMooga Festival, the two-day Prospect Park event dubbed as "an amusement park of food & drink," you're obviously not doing so for the music. It's all about the food. I mean, sure there's a James Murphy DJ set and a performance by The Roots -- but Hall & Oates as a headliner? That shit's LAME (Ed note: Some of your fellow FiPS writers would disagree, Shawn).

Maybe you were one of those lucky enough to score a free ticket to the event. Maybe you even forked over dough via Craigslist to get your hands on one. If so, you'll have access to food & drink from 75 food vendors, 30 brewers & 30 wine makers. Whether you'll have to wait in ridiculous lines over & over again is yet to be seen. Personally, I'm assuming CLUSTERFUCK.

At this point, if you weren't able to score a ticket, you do have the option of spending that extra $250 you have lying around on an ExtraMooga pass. With it, you get VIP access to as much food & drink as you can handle, alongside events such as a discussion about food & music with Ruth Reichel, Aziz Ansari, James Murphy and David Chang, and multiple Q&A's with Anthony Bourdain. There's even a Gatsby-themed brunch.

Whether you have a free ticket or the ExtraMooga pass, you'll be able to grab food from the aforementioned lineup of 75 mostly New York City-area artisanal vendors & critically-acclaimed restaurants. It's a rather impressive list. There'll be food from renowned chefs like David Chang, Tom Colicchio, Marcus Samuelsson & Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Hip chefs such as Eddie Huang and the M. Wells & Do or Dine crews will be serving up their wares. There's going to be FOOD FROM FRIGGIN' COOLIO.

As far as alcoholic beverages are concerned, you can get toasty in an Oktoberfest-style beer tasting pavilion featuring thirty different brewers, many of whom are from the greater New York area. Curated by Brooklyn Brewery's Garrett Oliver, there'll be five types of beers--hoppy, dark, farmhouse, unique & session--from breweries such as Kelso, Pretty Things, 21st Amendment & Captain Lawrence. If wine's more your style, they'll also have a wine tasting tent with glasses & tastes of over 100 wines from 30 wine makers from around the world.

If you don't gorge yourself like a gluttonous monarch, you've only got yourself (and the likely-horrendous lines) to blame. Here are a few of the notable food vendors to look out for:

Photo via calexicocart.com

1. Calexico

I'm addicted to these dudes' South Cali-style tacos. They're clean & tasty, and when combined with pumpkin arbol salsa or crack sauce, they're just badass tacos. After starting out as a food cart in Soho and taking home the cup at the 2008 Vendy Awards, Calexico added more carts and physical locales in both Red Hook & Williamsburg. This year, they took home a 2012 Zagat Award for Best NYC Mexican. Nice.

Photo via Gothamist

2. Do or Dine 

If you love to pour energy into despising hipsters, here's your chance, haters! Do or Dine's a Bed-Stuy joint run by a veritable gaggle of hipster chefs. It opened last summer, and since then it's gotten a bunch of press for their crazy menu -- most notably their FOIE GRAS DONUT. Take that, California! We're putting it in pastries out here!

3. DuMont Burger 

After years of acclaim in Williamsburg, Dumont decided to spin off a bit by focusing on their burger with Dumont Burger. I'm going to assume they'll be pumping out their burger sliders, which are tiny, meaty delights made with just the right amount of pink on the inside & a bread that's just as good.

Photo via Porchetta

4. Porchetta 

This East Village shop has been a mainstay at the Brooklyn Flea for a while now, where they serve up their signature porchetta sandwiches. The ones I've tried always have a pleasant mix of moist pork combined with the occasional salty, crispy & fatty piece, so if you dig on swine, these are right up your alley. The only downside is that the sandwiches are pretty friggin tiny.

Photo via jeangeorges.blogspot.com

5. Simply Chicken by Jean-Georges 

What do you get when you cross the head of a four-star restaurant with a food stand at Madison Square Garden? Simply Chicken, the latest venture from Jean-Georges Vongerichten. At the MSG locale, he puts his spin on chicken sandwiches, chicken hot dogs & the like, adding in elements like spicy sambal mayo in the sandwiches & kimchi relish on the dogs. It makes perfect sense, because when I think of a Knicks' game, I think of fine dining & class.

And here's the rest of the colossal GoogaMooga food line-up!

Arancini Bros - Deep fried risotto balls stuffed with various fillings
Baked - Nationally-recognized Red Hook bakery
Baohaus - Bad boy chef Eddie Huang’s joint featuring uniquely-filled baos
The Big Banana - Rockaway Beach chocolate covered frozen banana stand
Big Gay Ice Cream - TOTALLY GAY purveyors of ice cream from a truck and an East Village storefront
Blue Ribbon - New American restaurant with a locale in Park Slope & others all over the city
Brindle Room - Eclectic East Village New American comfort food
Brooklyn Soda Works - Unique, handmade, artisanal sodas
The Burger Joint - Tasty burger joint hidden in back of Le Parker Meridien
Char No. 4 - Cobble Hill restaurant known for whiskey & smoked meat
Co. - Chelsea restaurant who serves up pizza and thinks of bread as the centerpiece of a meal
Cookin' With Coolio - Former mediocre rapper & reality TV star shows off “5 star meals at a 1 star price”
Colicchio & Sons / Craft - Booths for two of celebrity chef Tom Colicchio's restaurants
Crawfish Monica - New Orleans-style seafood dish that's big at Jazz Fest
Crif Dogs - East Village gourmet hot dogs with an attitude
DBGB Kitchen and Bar - French & American food via "downmarket dining" in the East Village
Dickson’s Farmstand Meats - Chelsea market vendor that offers artisanal meats & meat products
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que - New York-area BBQ empire that's expanding to Gowanus in early 2013
Dirty Bird To Go - Chelsea restaurant whose motto is “fast slow food"
Frankies 457 Spuntino - Italian restaurant with locations in Carroll Gardens & the Lower East Side
Eat Me Sweetly - Baked goods & whatnot made with ingredients from Long Island farms
Free Bread - Gluten-free bread coming soon to NYC
Gatherer's Granola - Tasty granola in "Chipmunk’s Choice" & "Squirrel Bait" flavors
Georgia's Eastside BBQ - Lower East Side BBQ joint with a bomb fried chicken sandwich
Hill Country Barbecue Market - Midtown BBQ done up Texas-style
James - Farm-to-table American restaurant in Prospect Heights
Joe - Coffee purveyors with locations at Dekalb Market & all over Manhattan
Joe's Pizza - Greenwich Village institution that's been making pizza since 1975
Joseph Leonard - West Village New American restaurant
Juice Press - Raw juice & smoothie bar with locales throughout Manhattan
Kasadela - Snacks & sake in the East Village
Katzie Guy-Hamilton of New York Central - Desserts from a Season 2 Top Chef Desserts contestant
Kombucha Brooklyn - Fermented tea brew that people love though it's kinda scary
Kutsher’s Tribeca - Jewish-American bistro with long history who recently opened a Tribeca locale
The Lobster Place - They've been hawking lobsters since 1974 & have a retail store in Chelsea Market
Landhaus - Brooklyn Flea & Smorgasburg vendor with a "farm to sandwich" philosophy
La New Yorkina - Mexican ice & sweets found at carts around the city
Liddabit Sweets - Sweet treats found at Smorgasburg & at locales all over the city
Little Muenster - Lower East Side shop that serves "super fancy grilled cheese"
Luke's Lobster - Fresh Maine lobsters & seafood via truck & three Manhattan locales
Maharlika - Filipino restaurant in the East Village
Maison Premiere - Williamsburg place known for its oysters & cocktails, including premium absinthes
M. Wells - Long Island City diner that got tons of acclaim before closing last year
The Meat Hook - Williamsburg butcher shop from rock star butcher Tom Mylan
Melt Bakery - HUGE selection of customizable ice cream sandwiches
Mile End - Montreal-style Jewish deli that just opened up a sandwich shop in the East Village
Millefeuille Bakery Café - French bakery located in the West Village
Momofuku Milk Bar - David Chang five-locale franchise with baked goods (see: CRACK PIE) & beverages
Mother-In-Law's Kimchi - Small-batch kimchi company that's been around since 2009
Num Pang Sandwich Shop - East Village gourmet sandwich shop
people's pops - Fresh, local fruit ice pop vendors who recently opened up a Park Slope locale
Red Hook's El Olomega Pupusas - A long-standing Salvadoran pupusa vendor from the Red Hook ball fields
Red Rooster Harlem - American cuisine from Marcus Samuelsson, who's cooked dinner at the White House
Roberta's - Williamsburg, pizza & New American fare
Russ & Daughters - East Village institution who's offered bagels, smoked fish & specialty foods since 1914
Saxelby Cheesemongers - Cheesemongers who have a stand in the Essex St Market
Seersucker - Carroll Gardens restaurant specializing in Southern food
South Brooklyn Pizza - Brooklyn pizza joint with four locales, including two in Park Slope
Souvlaki GR - 2011 People's Choice Winner at the Vendy Awards for their Greek food
The Spotted Pig - East Village restaurant serving seasonal British & Italian
Sugarbuilt Cookies - A New Mexico native makes hand-iced sugar cookies in the shapes of skulls & stuff
Sullivan St Bakery - Hell’s Kitchen bakery whose bread is in restaurants all over the city
Third Rail Coffee - Greenwich Village coffee shop named a top ten NYC coffee shop by the NY Times in 2010
Tia Pol - Chelsea restaurant that serves Spanish tapas
Vinegar Hill House - Homey Vinegar Hill restaurant serving New American
Variety Café - Williamsburg coffee shop that serves Stumptown Coffee
Wooly's - Shaved ices made with fresh fruit & ingredients like fruity pebbles & brownie bites

So yeah...that's what you're looking at for this weekend. Have fun standing in line & getting fat, bitchez!

Read way more from Shawn at eatdrinksnack.com.