2 Long Island food festivals to check out this weekend

Summer on Long Island means festival season ... and this weekend boasts not one but two opportunities to try foods from all over the world.

Annual Halal Guide Food Festival

Organizers say this is the largest single-day halal food festival in the country. If last year's numbers are any indication, 20,000 people are expected to descend on Nassau Community College in Garden City, said organizer Raza Dastgir, of The Halal Guide.

"Not everybody is able to go out to Brooklyn and Manhattan," Dastgir said. "We try to bring all the new places that open up every year in one place, to get the community together. To showcase all the types of halal. We have Hamza & Madina coming, which serves chicken over rice. That’s what people know as halal, but there’s much more." 

The event has free admission and boasts 40 food vendors, including Yoyo Chicken cooking up smashburgers, Layers Bakeshop with baked goods, Bello Poultry Market doing live barbecue skewers and fresh juices, Sunshine Restaurant preparing chaat, and Kababjees preparing kulfi and water ices. This year's festival hours have been expanded later into the evening

More info: 1-11 p.m. Saturday at Nassau Community College in Garden City. Free admission, instagram.com/thehalalguide

Central American Independence Day Parade & Festival

On Sunday, the Central American Parade and Festival in Brentwood marks the Independence Days of five Latin American countries: Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and El Salvador. as well as Mexico. The event moves this year to the grounds of Suffolk County Community College. 

Organizer Miguel Bonilla, of the Salvadoran American Chamber of Commerce, said 9,000 people attended last year, but the event will be bigger than ever because they were able to bring in Dominican bachata legend Joe Veras to perform. In addition to other vendors from the community, the festival showcases 18 food vendors, many of whom are independent food sellers who don't have their own restaurants. They will sell traditional foods from Central and South American countries such as baleadas, pupusas, pollo con tajadas and treats like fresh fruit and snow cones. 

Bonilla, who arrived in New York from El Salvador in 1999, says he's seen the community change a lot over the past 25 years. 

"You see more diversity, because as first, Salvadorans coming in, they just entered construction, landscaping," he said. "Now you see Salvadorans exploring other areas, opening law firms, bakeries, restaurants. With all the experience they gained working for the restaurants here, they have created these unique dishes." Fogo de Chão will give out meat skewer samples, the new El Chalet which serves Salvadoran tortas, Martin's Coffee Cafe will sell Honduran baleadas, and Pinchos a la Suquita will have the Ecuadorian meat skewers that put Corona Plaza in Queens on the map. No alcohol is permitted at the event. 

More info: 11 a.m. parade starts at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Spence Street in Brentwood; festival runs 1-6:30 p.m. 1001 Crooked Hill Rd., Brentwood. Free admission, $10 VIP parking, facebook.com/CentralAmericanIndependenceLI

By Andi Berlin

andi.berlin@newsday.comAndiBerlin

Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.