I’ve mentioned the Olten Street Food Festival on my blog before because it happened to take place on June’s photo an hour day. However, I also meant to write a full post dedicated to the festival and Olten, and that hasn’t happened yet. There’s another Monday Escapes linkup happening today, so it seemed like a good opportunity.
Olten is only about half an hour from Basel by regional or inter-city train (faster by ICE – express train – but more expensive), but it’s already in another canton, namely Solothurn, and some of its surrounding towns are in another one again – Aargau. The town, which has a population of roughly 17,300, is located on the River Aare.
The food festival was taking place in Kirchgasse and Baslerstrasse. On the way there, we admired the streets of the old town.
Before deciding what to eat, we had a walk around the festival to see what was on offer. It wasn’t particularly large, but there was still quite a range of foods! Quite a lot of Indian stands, but also Japanese, Argentinian and Italian, just to give a few examples. And, of course, there was raclette!
Finally, we decided to start with something “local” – there was a stand offering tiny burgers (just the right size to be able to fit more food in afterwards!) and proudly proclaiming that the beef was from happy, Swiss cows.
The choice was a good one – the burgers were delicious! Tasty beef and yummy melted Swiss cheese.
Next up was a Columbian/Venzeuelan speciality – Arepas, corn bread with various fillings! Jan chose a vegetarian one with black beans and cheese while I went for chicken, which also came with cheese. It tasted a bit like the enchilada fillings you get in Mexican restaurants, but less spicy. Very tasty though! We had to wait a while for our order to be finished, so while I queued and Jan fetched drinks, the camera came back out 😉
As you might have noticed from the photos, it was a bit of a weird weather day. One minute it was bright sunshine, like in the photos above, the next it was cold and chucking it down, only to clear up again and become far too hot for rain coats 10 minutes later!
From one South-American cuisine to the next… we were getting quite full by this point, but we decided we still had time for a little Coxhina from a small Brazilian stand. This time, Jan chose chicken and I went for beef. Jan’s was delicious and mine had a nice flavour but unfortunately was still slightly cold inside. The filling was precooked though (they just reheated them at the stand), so I ate it anyway.
At that point, Jan decided he would like a coffee and I remembered seeing a sign for Turkish coffee at the entrance to the festival, so we headed to the Turkish stand. I chose a homemade lemonade, as I’m not a fan of Turkish coffee. The stall owner tried really hard to get us to also take one of his pastries, so we chose a pistachio-filled one to share.
The lemonade was lovely and refreshing and the pastry was not too sweet.
Having done enough eating for the day, we decided to have a walk around the rest of Olten while we were there. The old ton area is pretty but fairly small. Outside the old town, the buildings aren’t quite as nice, but the entire town is surrounded by mountains and greenness – a description that could apply to anywhere in Switzerland really 😉
Once we were back at the river, we were also almost back at the train station. With no room inside for more food, we decided to take the next train home. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon out and after reading so many other bloggers’ accounts of food festivals I was happy to finally get one of my own to try! There are more street food festivals planned by the same company for Lucerne (7-9 August 2015) and Berne (14-15 August 2015) and I’ve just read about another one in Solothurn (the city that gives the canton its name), which is taking place on 29 and 30 Augzst 2015, so hopefully I’ll make it to another one this summer!
Have you been to a street food festival? What would you have chosen to eat if you’d been in Olten with us? Let me know in the comments! And if you’ve got a travel tale for Monday Escapes, click the button below.
Love food carts and food stands – we have some good ones here in Copenhagen and they were extremely popular in Portland, OR – where I’m most recently from. Looks like you made some good choices – now I’m hungry! Arepas sounded delicious!
Here it’s usually mainly sausage stands if anything so all the interesting international foods made a great change.
THIS sounds like so my kind of thing 🙂 I should not have read it just before lunch… whatever I’m gonna have now will just be hugely disappointing 😦
I’m sure you managed to find something 😉
Oh, I saw the words ‘streetfood’ and immediately clicked this post!! It looks great 🙂
There’s nothing quite like street food, is there!? Looks delicious and interesting to explore. Thanks for sharing!
It was great. There needs to be more of these events!
What a lovely place! Proper, fresh lemonade is exactly what you need on days like this – it feels like fuel and is so refreshing!
Definitely! I wouldn’t mind a glass now!
Firstly, thank you for the dates. This would be a really great thing to do in the summer hols with the kids.
I love trying different foods. We often eat Raclette here too. Do you just eat it with bread or do you have lots of different ingredients for the little pans?
I definitely want to go to one of these festivals. Brilliant. I’m quite excited now!!!
We use all different ingredients – always potatoes, but then whatever we can think of/having lying around. I liked to add salami and courgette. We also have the raclette thingy with a place on the top for grilling so we can cook sausages and bacon on there if we want.
The food looks glorious and the place stunning. Looks and sounds like an awesome event and trip =) #MondayEscapes
I love a food festival and Olten looks wonderful and what a choice of delicious treats. I am literally drooling at the food you ate. I have to say you did very well… no wonder you were stuffed! And such a lovely area too, the old town and buildings are so pretty. Thanks for sharing on #MondayEscapes
This sounds really tasty! I love the look of the last dish!x
You’re right it really does look like weird weather!
Those burgers look amazing! ❤
They really were. Om nom nom.
All looks delicious! As a general rule of thumb, any place serving raclette is a good place by my standards 😉
Then Switzerland is one giant good place 😉
I can believe it!
I haven’t been to a street food festival, but judging by this one I think it might be a good thing to try. 🙂
If you like trying different kinds of foods it’s definitely a good thing to try!
I’m going to keep my eyes and ears open for one in my area. 🙂