My family always does a decent job packing in our own food to each Bonnaroo; we’ll equip camp with trail mix and fruit and bread we’ve already toasted so we can make PB&Js or cheese sandwiches.

But we inevitably end up eating at least one meal a day inside Centeroo, the main concert area, the first years out of convenience but now out of a sense of adventure and excitement.  Each year, the festival has grown its food presence.  You’ve got your typical “event” food, tweaked toward a more pleasant pitch: the traditional fries, sausages with peppers, and crappy beer in plastic bottles, as well as the Samosa Man, jambalaya, and a Broo’ers tent selling handcrafted beers.

Last year, they hopped the American food truck craze and established a Food Truck Oasis.  It perches on a slight rise up between the This Tent and the Other Tent.  At night, with the Christmas lights that outline truck awnings flashing pinpoints in the dark and the diffuse yellow bulbs from the kitchens throwing shadows of the along the metal, you can stand at a distance and believe that you’re watching a caravan in the desert or a circus camping down for the night.  It’s beautiful. Continue reading →