In 2012, the first 626 Night Market kicked off to unexpected fanfare near Old Town Pasadena. Music played over sizzling grills as the smell of barbecued beef skewers filled the air. The crowds were huge.
Founder Jonny Hwang aimed for a rather niche audience, but word of mouth drew 30,000 people to the event, far more than planned.
“Everybody grabbed their moms or dads or grandmas or kids, and they all just jumped in the car and came as far away as San Francisco and Las Vegas,” said Patricia Huang, a general manager for 626 Night Market, which seven months after that first event would find a new home at Santa Anita Park in nearby Arcadia. “GPS sent them all down one road and all the same freeways, so it clogged up the freeways and it was this massive influx of people into Pasadena.”
Flashforward to now, and Asian-themed night markets dot the Southern California landscape, re-emerging after a pandemic pause that shut them down.
They are drawing tens of thousands to “pop-up” events from Arcadia to San Diego, with visitors ranging from those willing to brave the summer heat on the afternoon pavement, to those who wait for the true outdoor night-life experience.
That experience includes deejays, musicians and dancers taking to stages, while hundreds of people line up in front of smoke-covered booths eager to get a bite from an array of vendors serving everything from mini castella cakes to alligator bites.
Meanwhile, local cities with significant Asian American populations — such as Arcadia — are reaping the benefits, as big summertime crowds converge for a unique blend of Asian food and West Coast culture.
“It’s become a signature event in Arcadia,” said Jason Kruckeberg, assistant city manager and development services director for Arcadia, reflecting on the impact of the 626 Night Market in his city. “It’s kind of synonymous with Arcadia now because it has been at the racetrack for so long and people look forward to it every year.”
Night markets emerge from pandemic
By 2019, the Asian night market scene was rolling. The 626 event alone had gone from 60 vendors to hundreds. It had become a trend on social media, with #626nightmarket tagged on nearly 120,000 food vlogs and photo posts on Instagram alone.
But just as it gained momentum, the events industry was hit hard during the pandemic.
Larger events such as 626 shuttered in 2020 as COVID-19 spread and state and county public health measures took hold.
“We shut down right a few months before the summer launch of our season,” Huang said. “The pandemic was extremely hard on the events industry. Our first events start usually in May.”
COVID-19 forced many traditional Asian vendors to walk away.
Thankfully, because of the seasonal nature of night markets, the events had the gift of some time.
“We returned strong with a full season right when Governor Newsom lifted restrictions in early spring 2021,” she said. “Usually it takes nine months for us to plan and launch, but we were able to accomplish that in 1.5 months, to make it in time to start the night market season. We have an amazing team. We were the only large-scale event that was able to pull that, that summer.”
626 was able to quickly plan a limited return in 2021, and have since made a comeback.
She added that while the effects of COVID-19 still impact the night market, they also brought new opportunities, including sponsorships and partnerships with Tesla and music label 88rising, the company behind Asian American music festival Head in the Clouds.
The pandemic even saw the creation of new night markets that sought to support local struggling businesses. The OMG Family Foodie Festival, for example, started in Northern California last year before bringing the market down to Rowland Heights in early August.
OMG Entertainment CEO Peggy Hsieh said the company decided to start doing night markets not only to bring entertainment to Northern California, but also to support Asian restaurants.
“We work with a lot of restaurants, and we do marketing for a lot of restaurants, and we just realized their profit is lower than before after COVID-19,” said Hsieh. “A lot of restaurants are doing bad now, especially restaurant owners who cannot speak English, nowadays they’re looking for many ways to earn more profit.”
The pandemic pause also led to legislation that could be a path for more regular night markets in California. In July, San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney announced a proposal for new state legislation that will create a yearlong permit for night markets and farmers markets.
The bill – AB 441 – aims to streamline the process for cities and neighborhoods to host a range of outdoor events, from farmers and flea markets to night markets.
Haney said such events bring vibrancy to cities and neighborhoods.
“We know that people love night markets,” said Haney in a press conference in San Francisco. “We see all over Asia and all over the United States, examples of night markets that are thriving, where people are coming together in community with food, with culture, with music and art and there’s no reason we shouldn’t see that happening in our city too.”
But it was clear that as the pandemic has subsided, many Asian night markets regained momentum in 2023.
Huang still marvels at the comeback and the growth from those early days back in Pasadena.
“We’ve moved to larger venues, we’ve grown to a huge size and we have to host at huge venues to keep up with the demand of the vendors and attendees,” said Huang, who now manages the event.
That growth is not just an Arcadia thing.
Events such as FoodieLand Night Market in Pasadena and San Diego, KTOWN Night Market in Koreatown, the Taste of Japan in Anaheim and Little Saigon’s Asian Garden Night Market in Westminster have exploded in size and popularity and draw big crowds. Universities have gotten in on the trend as well, with schools like the University of Southern California, San Diego State University, Cal State Northridge, and UC Irvine starting their own night markets on campus. The big ones are concentrated in the summer, but others “pop up” year around.
626 itself has taken its market beyond the San Gabriel Valley to neighboring Orange County, to San Diego, to up north in the Bay Area, to even out of state in Las Vegas.
Asian night markets and the road to L.A.
The concept of the Asian night market dates back nearly 1,500 years to the Chinese Tang Dynasty. It eventually made its way over to the island of Taiwan a bit over 200 years ago, said Vivian Liu, the director of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau in L.A., noting that night markets have stood the test of time because they have become an essential part of the people’s cultural lifestyle.
There are differences, of course, between U.S. night markets and the traditional Asian market. For one thing, those in Asia are permanent, every day “features of the urban landscape. Those in America are pop-ups,” said Oliver Wang, a sociology professor at Cal State Long Beach who studies popular culture, race and ethnicity.
Still, places such as the Shilin and Raoh markets in Taiwan and the various hawker markets in Malaysia served as the template for aspiring American night market organizers.
In Asia, hundreds of people regularly visit these spots, wading through the cramped aisles, eating unique street food and playing carnival games at their leisure.
The Asian Garden Night Market in Westminster’s Little Saigon stands as one of the earlier American examples inspired by its overseas progenitors.
Lyna Le, office manager for the Orange County event, remembers when its founder, Frank Jao, pitched the idea back in 2011.
“With [Jao’s] travels throughout the world, he noticed that there were a lot of night markets in Vietnam, all over China, Taiwan and Thailand, … and one day, he wanted to create this night market… We didn’t know what he was talking about,” said Le. “He was kind of explaining this to us, and at the time we were trying to research what this idea is and we couldn’t figure it out.”
Open-air markets like Olvera Street in Downtown Los Angeles, the sidewalk mercados, and the Original O.C. Swap Meet in Orange County are community favorites, but the idea of an Asian-themed night market — with food stalls, games and merchandise — in Southern California was a relatively foreign concept.
The key was how to translate the traditional night market for an American audience.
For one, the event had to weave its way into local life.
“Taiwan people are always hard-working and we like to eat something quickly, so night markets and food stands sometimes provide food quickly and you can easily have a bite and head to work,” said Liu.
They also tend to settle into the larger urban landscape, which made the San Gabriel Valley 626 event somewhat of an outlier. Arcadia, a San Gabriel Valley foothill community, is more or less a suburb rather than a big city. And it’s without the tight streets and alleyways that are often used as the base for night markets in Asia.
But Wang, the Cal State Long Beach professor, noted that in Southern California, Arcadia is an ideal place for the night market mainly because of its predominantly Asian and Asian American population.
“I think like a lot of people who are both familiar with night markets, just having gone there with their families growing up and knowing about the demographics of the San Gabriel Valley, it seemed like a no-brainer to attempt something like that here,” Wang said.
And it worked.
A common ground for food culture
But why did Hwang, who started 626, run into that unexpected success in the first place? Asian food often seems to stand outside the American culinary landscape with a sometimes overlooked appeal.
Wang said the American culinary landscape is one of the places in which Asian food has found more acceptance.
“If you think about Asian Americans, food is one of the very few lanes in popular culture that we are recognized and celebrated,” Wang said. “Chinese American restaurants specifically, for example, have been part of the United States since the 1850s. You think about the history of Japanese food in the U.S., let alone these days, the prominence of Korean, Thai, Filipino, etc., food. This has all prepared the rest of America for us being a legitimate presence.”
But over the years, night markets such as 626 have become more diverse in their food selection and vendors, which also have allowed for growth in its customer base.
“When we first started, we wanted it to be an Asian market, and so we went out and we invited mostly Asian restaurants,” Huang said. “But over time, I think we became more popular and started soaking up the Los Angeles food scene. We started becoming the L.A. night market.”
This is most evident in the hundreds of local vendors who often participate in these events. Everything from tacos to grilled skewers to decorated macarons can be found on the fairground.
Some food vendors like to keep things traditional, such as Malayvanh Bouatay, who runs the booth Laomazing Eats. She serves up traditional Lao desserts, such as mango sticky rice, ube nam wan and coconut cakes. To her, these events allow her and her family to share their cultural eats with a large audience.
“It’s really a fun thing to do because we’ve always been wanting to share our Lao cuisine with the mass of people, and this is an opportunity to do that because they do bring in a lot of people and we want to share southeast flavors,” said Bouatay.
Sometimes, the vast array of food at the night markets inspires attendees to join in on sharing their culture.
Leo Zhang, owner of Bombing Giant Squid, recalled wanting to start his own booth after visiting 626 as an attendee.
“The reason that I joined 626 is that I felt that as one of the oldest organizers of these kinds of events, there’s a diversity of Asian food,” Zhang said. “I saw that there were vendors selling Korean barbecue squid, and I know that there are fried squid from China, so I thought that this might be a good way to promote it.”
The night markets also serve as a breeding ground for new kinds of food that blur the lines between taste. Cafe 949, for example, sells fresh grilled Maine lobster, “with a secret sauce and garlic noodles topped with cheese.”
Owner Danny Hoang said that he enjoys attending and selling his food largely because of the culinary experimentation.
“People with ideas, they can take a basic food item from their culture and add it with another culture in fusion,” Hoang said. “That way it just gives a platform for people to bring a lot of creativity out of us that we enjoy here.”
With that, some vendors try out unexpected combinations. Sometimes, it reminds attendees of American carnival food, such as the bizarre donut-burger combinations at events like the Orange County Fair.
Jeffrey Golez runs Baozza, a booth that sells traditional Chinese steamed buns, or “baozi,” stuffed with things like tomato sauce and cheese, reminiscent of a slice of pizza.
“Our booth is essentially a fusion between American pizza and the Chinese baozi and we do it two different ways,” Golez said. “We have a few flavors we cycle out, but we do have steamed, so regular Chinese baozi with pizza inside or we also deep fry them so it has a nice crispy exterior.”
The constant fusion and experimentation may crowd out some traditional or “authentic” flavors. But Wang said food has always been about the mixing of cultures, so the culinary innovation at these night markets is just part of the process.
“I just think that the discourse around authenticity is kind of worthless in general, especially applied to any aspect of culture, least of all when we apply it to food,” he said. “Food is the one that is most open to adaptability, being transformed in ways that we start noticing, but if you just trace the history behind a lot of dishes, you realize none of this stuff has some kind of pure origin that somehow was ruined by commercialization.”
‘A great place to start’
Alongside being laboratories for new food ideas, night markets also serve as a new industry, especially for those looking to start a small food business without the hefty overhead and hassle of a brick-and-mortar.
“Markets are a great place to start for new business owners,” said Felisha Eng, the owner of Boba Bestie, a stand that sells the ever-popular boba drink. “If someone wants to get into the food world and they want something that is lower maintenance, less risk than opening up a storefront, night markets would be the way to go.”
Golez echoes this, saying that having customers discover their business in-person is the best way to get the word out.
“Just kind of experiencing getting that exposure out here, like more organic type of exposure than buying ads or anything,” said Golez. “[Attendees] come by, try one. They come back on the same day, buy three for the rest of their family, buy six for the rest of their family, so it’s really fulfilling to see we got a good product.”
‘Something for everybody’
Even if not quite the same as a traditional night market, the local markets have become a staple in Southern California in their own right while inspiring smaller start-up events.
Arcadia Councilmember Eileen Wang pointed to similar events in other areas of her city, encouraged by the success of 626.
“This expansion of night markets, food festivals, and community events not only provides residents with more entertainment options but also fosters a sense of community and promotes collaboration among businesses,” she said.
Wang, the Cal State Long Beach sociology professor (no relation to Eileen Wang), is not altogether surprised at their impact in an ever-evolving Southern California culinary and cultural scene.
“I think the success and visibility of the 626 Night Market has been one reason other places around L.A. have done their own night markets — but they’re just one of many influences around, just without branding or marketing,” he said, pointing to Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan sidewalk mercados that have also been around for years.
“Street food in L.A. has always been part of the city’s culinary history, but in the last 20 years, we’ve seen an upsurge in energy and interest in making street food more accessible — and sustainable — around the city,” he said.
As for the Asian night markets across Southern California, they have become distinctly American in their diversity of flavor and audience.
For those curious about stepping foot into one of these massive fairgrounds, Huang — the manager at 626 — had a bit of advice: “Follow your tastebuds. There’s something for everybody.”
Upcoming Night Markets
626 Night Market – Arcadia
Admission: $5 presale, $6 on event days
Upcoming Date: Sept. 1-3, 2023
Address: 285 W. Huntington Drive, Arcadia, CA, 91007
https://www.626nightmarket.com/tickets-626
FoodieLand Night Market – San Diego
Admission: $6
Upcoming Date: Sept. 22-24, 2023
Address: 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar, CA 92014
https://foodielandnm.com/san-diego/
Asian Garden Night Market
Admission: Free
Upcoming Date: Every weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun) from Jun. 16-Sept. 3, 2023
Address: 9200 Bolsa Ave., Westminster, CA 92683
https://www.littlesaigonnow.com/asian-garden-night-market-1170.html
Other Asian night markets (with dates to be announced)
626 Night Market – Orange County
https://www.626nightmarket.com/tickets-oc
626 Night Market Mini – Santa Monica
https://www.626nightmarket.com/mini
Related links
Orange County night markets may face new permit process: What it means
A yearly visit to 626 Night Market reveals the power of food and culture
Food-filled night markets are crossing into the mainstream and headed our way
Little Saigon’s night market draws largest crowd yet
626 Night Market Mini – San Diego
https://www.626nightmarket.com/minisd
FoodieLand Night Market – Los Angeles
https://foodielandnm.com/los-angeles/
Taste of Japan – Anaheim
https://www.tasteofjpn.com/anaheimgardenwalk
KTOWN Night Market – Koreatown, Los Angeles
https://www.ktownnightmarket.com/
OMG Family Foodie Fest – Rowland Heights
https://www.eventsomg.com/about-3-7
Ethan Huang was a reporting intern with the Southern California News Group during the summer of 2023. This story was his enterprise project completed during his internship, co-sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association, Los Angeles Chapter.