626 Night Market in Arcadia

I went to 626 Night Market held on the Aug 27-29 weekend. I was there on Friday night and it was as crowded as I expected. This was my first night market in SoCal and I was really excited to be here especially after lockdown year. Anyways, since it was my first time here, my bf and I went all in to try the food that we really wanted to try! They offered various food from mexican to filipino to korean to japanese to asian fushion food. All of which we were spoilt with choices! The lobsters were really popular there but we didnt get to try because by then we were already so full after trying many other smaller sized food. Ube balls were my favorite! As well as the king squid which was worth the price comparing to its gigantic size. We also bought the refillable baby bottle we did not want to miss out on our chance! But I also bought the lychee soda drink from another booth, which was soooo good too. Overall vibe was really exciting and would come back again maybe next year. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the night and having their tummies filled with delicious, tasty menu brought by the vendors

Visiting the 626 Night Market with a group of friends is a blast with a few caveats. It was the second time for me when my friends and I went on Sunday, August 29. There seemed to be a lot more vendors compared to when I first went in 2016. Fortunately I already did a little bit of research before going in and read through some Yelp reviews to have an idea of which food/vendors to try and know what to expect. My friends and I arrived at 5:30 pm, which was perfect because 1) we did not have to walk too far from our parking spot to the entrance and 2) the lines for bag check, to get in, and for the food vendors were still short. This year all ticketing was done online, i.e. one could not just walk in and buy a ticket at the door. This helped the line to get in move quickly because you just had to pull up the ticket on your phone screen and put your phone close to the ticket booth window. We got to try a few different food items since we were sharing amongst five people. I brought a few disposable plastic utensils, which turned out to be really helpful for sharing food. Wet wipes were also great to have because the standing tables were dirty. Here are the food items we tried ranked from what I would recommend the most: 1) Egghausted's spicy mentaiko tamagoyaki ($12): Soooo delicious. The mentaiko and spicy mayo went really well with the fluffy rolled omelette. We also loved the Pikachu on top of our tamagoyaki. At $12, this was the best value out of everything we ordered. 2) Giant squid: the line was already pretty long before 6 pm, so I would recommend getting...

Garbage food at a premium price. You pay to get in, pay a premium price for really low-grade food. No place to sit, they don't have staff cleaning the VERY FEW tables to actually eat your food. It was gross to see all tables full of food stuck on them and/or crumbs all over. I'm surprised they haven't been shut down with all these COVID safety regulations. For this and even less cost you can enjoy a clean, nice dining experience. STAY AWAY! Not worth it at all and not even "an experience" to try once in your life. SUPER JUNK EXPENSIVE FOOD, UNSANITARY CONDITIONS, OVERCROWDED WHERE PEOPLE ARE COUGHING IN YOUR FACE, MASKS NOT BEING ENFORCED.