Bonnaroo Day 1: Gastropod and Roti Rolls

Good morning folks! Well, let’s just say that Bonnaroo is off to a roaring start. We got up bright and early yesterday, grabbed our friends and headed down to Manchester. We got our tent set up in time to see local Nashville boy Richie kill it on the Miller Light Stage. He played with an expanded band that included the ladies from Birdcloud and Tristen.

After Richie, I waited around Centeroo to try and catch DIIV who I was really excited about seeing, only to find out they missed their plane and had to reschedule. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch them today!

So to cheer myself up after missing DIIV I went to GastroPod over in the Food Truck Oasis for a snack. I ordered the white corn cake, which was a very fancy arepa. Arepas are ubiquitous at Bonnaroo and seems to be the kid's food of choice. But this wasn’t your garden variety/food vendor stall greasy arepa. The dough was light and fluffy and had not a bit of grease. The cheese on top was fresh and tasted vaguely of goat cheese. The slaw on top, made of cabbage and carrots, remained crisp despite clearly being soaked a long time in vinegar. That slaw was the jam and they should put it on everything...

And look at that! They do! (get out of my head GastroPod) Steve got their Dirty Chips, comprised of potato chips, a paprika based spiced mayo, and that amazing slaw. I wasn’t blown away by this, but for a $4 snack at Bonnaroo it’s a pretty good deal.

After the snack we went to check out Araabmuzik, who has highly entertaining lighting fast fingers.  He is one of the best “one dude on the stage with equipment” acts I’ve seen. HE WAS ACTUALLY DOING STUFF! Amazing, right?! The crowd obviously liked it too because there was some early in the day crowd surfing.

Then we went back to the campground to partake in a crawfish boil. It was a great communal experience because I was able to talk to a lot of people as we waited along the tables for our food. Once those crawfish were dropped people went crazy on them. It was even a few people’s first time having crawfish and I think they really enjoyed the experience. Me on the other hand, let’s just say that I ate myself sick and I won’t be eating crawfish for the foreseeable future.

After I made sure I sufficiently stunk from crawfish, I made my way back to the stages to check out Japandroids. I really liked their last album and it was my first time seeing them live. There was lots of bouncing around and WHOO OHHH OHHS going on. I left their set a bit early to see Father John Misty who put on a really good show. His stage moves were sexy as hell, although he kind of looked like an epileptic belly dancer at points.

After Father John I met up with Steve in the food truck area again where we got another late night snack. I feel like Bonnaroo is designed for food grazing, seeing as there are lots of tempting small options everywhere you look. We went to the Roti Rolls truck where I ordered the Thurman Murman. (Braised pork, creole mac & cheese, and kimchi).

I’ll be honest, the combination of things inside the Roti was weird. The kimchi made everything taste like vinegar which did not mix well with the mac and cheese. But the Roti bread itself? THAT WAS AMAZING. I feel like this truck should just have  a basket full of Roti so I can order that as a snack every night. 

I would say I had a fairly successful first day! (And so did my stomach)