FOOD TRUCKS IN U.S.A
With food-truck fever sweeping the nation, intrepid journalist Heather Shouse launched a coast-to-coast exploration of street food. In Food Trucks, she gives readers a page-by-page compass for finding the best movable feasts in America.
From decades-old pushcarts manned by tradition-towing immigrants to massive, gleaming mobile kitchens run by culinary prodigies, she identifies more than 100 chowhound pit-stops that are the very best of the best. Serving up everything from slow-smoked barbecue ribs to escargot puffs, with virtually every corner of the globe represented in brilliant detail for authentic eats, Food Trucks presents portable and affordable detour-worthy dishes and puts to rest the notion that memorable meals can only be experienced in lofty towers of haute cuisine.
The secrets behind the vibrant flavors found in Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, Hungarian paprikash, lacy French crepes, and global mash-ups like Mex-Korean kimchi quesadillas are delivered via more than 45 recipes, contributed by the truck chefs themselves. Behind-the-scenes profiles paint a deeper portrait of the talent behind the trend, offering insight into just what spawned the current mobile-food concept and just what kind of cook chooses the taco-truck life over the traditional brick-and-mortar restauranteur route. Vivid photography delivers tantalizing vignettes of street food life, as it ebbs and flows with the changing demographics from city to city.
Forget everything you think you know about food trucks. During a year of traveling the country researching the topic, I stumbled upon a few truths: gleaming mobile kitchens run by trained chefs who have mastered Twitter can turn out disastrous food. Rickety carts with questionable permits might just turn out some of the best. The “roach coach” moniker doesn’t apply to the majority of this country’s mobile food operations any more than it does to the majority of this country’s restaurants (well, save for the “coach” part, of course). And no, Kogi did not invent the food truck. But they just might have reinvented its At least they got the world to sit up and take notice. The L.A.- based Korean taco truck was repeatedly cited as a source of inspiration by food truck owners I spoke to during my travels, and in the time since Kogi rol ed out in late 2008, the buzz around food trucks has reached fever pitch. Favoring quirk over pomp, talented cooks and critical y acclaimed chefs are ditching the brick-and-mortar standard for kitchens on wheels, churning out incredible food for a new breed of diners more interested in flavor than fuss. Just in time for the biggest recession this country has seen since the Depression, this alternative to the traditional restaurant model proved to be a pretty smart business move for many talented cooks. What with rent or mortgage, tables and chairs, décor, front-of-the-house staff, a stocked bar, and additional labor, the average restaurant costs around $400,000 just to get the doors open. Most of the food truck owners I met across the country spent a fraction of that, more in the neighborhood of $20,000 to $50,000 to get up and running. Sure, there’s the disparity in profits to consider, but for the most part these truck chefs are stil making a decent living, while reaping the benefits of being their own boss and creating the biggest buzz the industry has seen since the advent of quick-serves.
In fact, the interest in food trucks has become so widespread that in September of 2010 Business.gov, the U.S. government’s official website for smal businesses, added a page titled “Tips for Starting Your Own Street Food Business,” with links to state departments of health, zoning laws, and business permits. Navigating the red tape is often cited as the biggest hurdle for wanna-be food truck operators, so many of whom are itching to get into the game that several cities are being forced to reexamine their mobile food vending laws to satisfy the growing demand. Cities such as Los Angeles, where food trucks have long been legal, have seen mobile food vendor applications quadruple in the past two years, along with complaints from restaurants facing new competition. In response, city council panels have been set up specifical y to keep the peace, setting limits on the number of permits issued and establishing new regulations on a continual basis. In areas where street food vending has historical y been something of a nonissue, the city governments are scrambling to come up with regulations, as wel as decide exactly where they stand on the issue. Case in point, Boston mayor Thomas Menino: to get his city up to speed with his neighbors to the south, New York and Phil y, he hired a new food policy director in 2010 and launched a “Food Truck Challenge” to test the waters, with a goal of permitting thirty to fifty trucks by summer of 2011. Similarly, in June of 2010, Cincinnati approved a Mobile Food & Beverage Truck Vending Pilot Program to create twenty designated food truck parking spots in the downtown area; within a month al twenty slots were filled. Keeping up with the regulation changes, the cities jumping on board with the movement, and the cities slow to come around (looking at you, Chicago) is as dizzying as tracking each new arena the popularity of food trucks seeps into. For the fal season of 2010, Food Network launched the show The Great Food Truck Race, a sort of street food take on the Amazing Race. On user-generated sites like Yelp, beloved trucks from various cities are holding their own with big-name restaurants. The annual National Restaurant Association convention (the biggest show in the industry) now has a section of the showroom floor dedicated solely to food trucks, with equipment companies, graphics specialists, and truck manufacturers chomping at the bit to sel their services to the next Kogi. Needless to say, these mobile kitchens have come a long way since the chuck wagons of the Wild West, the construction-site lunch wagons of the mid-1900s, and even the taco trucks that started popping up throughout the country in the 1970s. Taking many forms—a custom-welded pig-shaped rig complete with giant snout, a gleaming carnival on wheels manned by a crew sporting fake moustaches and turbans—this new breed of food truck often stakes out regular spots to set up shop for the day, but more recently, with the advent of Twitter, legions of chowhounds are kept in the loop with updates of the truck’s travels.
But the food truck scene is not al gleaming mobile kitchens, newfangled technology, and accomplished chefs ditching fine dining for life on the road —time-tested global traditions continue with skewered chicken rotating over smoldering mesquite in a truck’s trailer bed on Hawaii’s North Shore, Czech dumplings and goulash simmering away in a tiny wooden cart in Portland, or a Sri Lankan immigrant swirling lentil crepe batter onto his mobile griddle in New York City. In selecting the carts, trailers, and trucks I traveled to areas with a high concentration of street food (with a couple of exceptions for stumbled-upon lone stars in New Hampshire, Kansas City, and even Marfa, Texas). Arriving in cities like Los Angeles and New York, which are nearly drowning in food truck options, I set about with copious notes in hand, consulted with area experts, and did a lot of walking and a lot of talking, with the principal goal of finding trucks and carts that were (a) serving delicious food, and (b) run by people with a story to tel . (In fact, I found so many fantastic eats that I included the extras as Side Dishes. These meals on wheels turned out to be some of the best food I’ve eaten in my life, more memorable than multicourse tasting menus served in the ivory towers of haute cuisine,
and the people behind these foods were often more inspiring than any “celebrity chef.” For the street cooks who are first-generation Americans, their livelihood is a connection to their community, their cart or truck serving as a hub for conversation and, of course, eating; they are also a sign that a particular region of India, Eastern Europe, or Mexico has arrived in the States, with its definitive foods in tow. And for the young American cooks striving to make a name for themselves, the common thread is the same: with passion, commitment, and hard work, anyone can scrape out a living serving delicious food — no restaurant needed.
By Heather Shouse in "Food Trucks" - Dispatches and Recipes from the Best Kitchens on Wheels, Ten Speed Press (Random House, Inc), U.S.A., 2011, excerpts p.6 (Introduction). Typed, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa
From decades-old pushcarts manned by tradition-towing immigrants to massive, gleaming mobile kitchens run by culinary prodigies, she identifies more than 100 chowhound pit-stops that are the very best of the best. Serving up everything from slow-smoked barbecue ribs to escargot puffs, with virtually every corner of the globe represented in brilliant detail for authentic eats, Food Trucks presents portable and affordable detour-worthy dishes and puts to rest the notion that memorable meals can only be experienced in lofty towers of haute cuisine.
The secrets behind the vibrant flavors found in Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, Hungarian paprikash, lacy French crepes, and global mash-ups like Mex-Korean kimchi quesadillas are delivered via more than 45 recipes, contributed by the truck chefs themselves. Behind-the-scenes profiles paint a deeper portrait of the talent behind the trend, offering insight into just what spawned the current mobile-food concept and just what kind of cook chooses the taco-truck life over the traditional brick-and-mortar restauranteur route. Vivid photography delivers tantalizing vignettes of street food life, as it ebbs and flows with the changing demographics from city to city.
In fact, the interest in food trucks has become so widespread that in September of 2010 Business.gov, the U.S. government’s official website for smal businesses, added a page titled “Tips for Starting Your Own Street Food Business,” with links to state departments of health, zoning laws, and business permits. Navigating the red tape is often cited as the biggest hurdle for wanna-be food truck operators, so many of whom are itching to get into the game that several cities are being forced to reexamine their mobile food vending laws to satisfy the growing demand. Cities such as Los Angeles, where food trucks have long been legal, have seen mobile food vendor applications quadruple in the past two years, along with complaints from restaurants facing new competition. In response, city council panels have been set up specifical y to keep the peace, setting limits on the number of permits issued and establishing new regulations on a continual basis. In areas where street food vending has historical y been something of a nonissue, the city governments are scrambling to come up with regulations, as wel as decide exactly where they stand on the issue. Case in point, Boston mayor Thomas Menino: to get his city up to speed with his neighbors to the south, New York and Phil y, he hired a new food policy director in 2010 and launched a “Food Truck Challenge” to test the waters, with a goal of permitting thirty to fifty trucks by summer of 2011. Similarly, in June of 2010, Cincinnati approved a Mobile Food & Beverage Truck Vending Pilot Program to create twenty designated food truck parking spots in the downtown area; within a month al twenty slots were filled. Keeping up with the regulation changes, the cities jumping on board with the movement, and the cities slow to come around (looking at you, Chicago) is as dizzying as tracking each new arena the popularity of food trucks seeps into. For the fal season of 2010, Food Network launched the show The Great Food Truck Race, a sort of street food take on the Amazing Race. On user-generated sites like Yelp, beloved trucks from various cities are holding their own with big-name restaurants. The annual National Restaurant Association convention (the biggest show in the industry) now has a section of the showroom floor dedicated solely to food trucks, with equipment companies, graphics specialists, and truck manufacturers chomping at the bit to sel their services to the next Kogi. Needless to say, these mobile kitchens have come a long way since the chuck wagons of the Wild West, the construction-site lunch wagons of the mid-1900s, and even the taco trucks that started popping up throughout the country in the 1970s. Taking many forms—a custom-welded pig-shaped rig complete with giant snout, a gleaming carnival on wheels manned by a crew sporting fake moustaches and turbans—this new breed of food truck often stakes out regular spots to set up shop for the day, but more recently, with the advent of Twitter, legions of chowhounds are kept in the loop with updates of the truck’s travels.
But the food truck scene is not al gleaming mobile kitchens, newfangled technology, and accomplished chefs ditching fine dining for life on the road —time-tested global traditions continue with skewered chicken rotating over smoldering mesquite in a truck’s trailer bed on Hawaii’s North Shore, Czech dumplings and goulash simmering away in a tiny wooden cart in Portland, or a Sri Lankan immigrant swirling lentil crepe batter onto his mobile griddle in New York City. In selecting the carts, trailers, and trucks I traveled to areas with a high concentration of street food (with a couple of exceptions for stumbled-upon lone stars in New Hampshire, Kansas City, and even Marfa, Texas). Arriving in cities like Los Angeles and New York, which are nearly drowning in food truck options, I set about with copious notes in hand, consulted with area experts, and did a lot of walking and a lot of talking, with the principal goal of finding trucks and carts that were (a) serving delicious food, and (b) run by people with a story to tel . (In fact, I found so many fantastic eats that I included the extras as Side Dishes. These meals on wheels turned out to be some of the best food I’ve eaten in my life, more memorable than multicourse tasting menus served in the ivory towers of haute cuisine,
and the people behind these foods were often more inspiring than any “celebrity chef.” For the street cooks who are first-generation Americans, their livelihood is a connection to their community, their cart or truck serving as a hub for conversation and, of course, eating; they are also a sign that a particular region of India, Eastern Europe, or Mexico has arrived in the States, with its definitive foods in tow. And for the young American cooks striving to make a name for themselves, the common thread is the same: with passion, commitment, and hard work, anyone can scrape out a living serving delicious food — no restaurant needed.
By Heather Shouse in "Food Trucks" - Dispatches and Recipes from the Best Kitchens on Wheels, Ten Speed Press (Random House, Inc), U.S.A., 2011, excerpts p.6 (Introduction). Typed, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa
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