Gourmet Meals on Wheels
By CANDICE YACONO
Social media spurs the popularity of food trucks in the United States, many of which whip up meals of samosas and crepes with equal élan.
Imagine a place where you can order Moroccan couscous with raisins to start off your dinner, followed by a spicy Korean taco and then an oversized French crepe with strawberries for dessert. You linger after your meal, making new friends, watching a rock band perform and sampling other people’s dishes.
Then, at the end of the evening, an engine roars and the restaurant drives away.
A gourmet food truck trend that started in Los Angeles, California has spread through the United States. A combination of low overhead, devoted customers and room for creativity has allowed the trend, once mocked by many, to flourish into a viable business for thousands of entrepreneurs.
Food trucks have long been patronized by Americans seeking cheap lunch options—typically Mexican tacos or burritos. But in the last three years, a new crop of chefs have achieved fame and fortune serving delicious, healthy, gourmet meals at low prices to a diverse, often hip, clientele.
These mobile entrepreneurs use Twitter and Facebook to broadcast their schedules, as they cart their offerings from business offices to bowling alleys.
“Social media is the reason that the trend gained popularity this fast,” chef and India Jones Chow Truck owner Sumant Pardal says. “We can give minute-by-minute updates on Twitter. Every time we go to a location, we send a tweet, and people are really interested in that tweet.”
Gourmet food trucks got their start about three years ago when they parked in front of top Los Angeles bars and nightclubs, and customers began lining up for delicacies like Korean barbeque tacos.
When the first trucks’ success skyrocketed, other would-be chefs quickly started buying up used food trucks and developing portable menu items that would appeal to the young people of Los Angeles, who grew up in a multicultural world where souvlaki and samosas are as familiar to them as hot dogs and French fries.
The queues of people waiting to try the food trucks’ wares can sometimes be staggering: Dos Chinos, a Mexican Asian gourmet fusion food truck, frequently sees hundreds of patrons who stand in line for an hour or more, to try the truck’s signature dishes.
French cuisine truck, Crepes Bonaparte, attained fame when it competed on a Food Network reality television show, “The Great Food Truck Race.”
“It was an absolutely amazing and life-changing experience. We learned a lot through it,” truck co-owner Danielle Garcia says. “I think food trucks are just something very fun and different. L.A. is very welcoming to new and different things. There are such diverse people here, and they like to be up on the latest trends. We believe that this trend has room to grow.”
The food truck owners have formed a tight-knit community. In an otherwise abandoned empty lot in an industrial area with no traditional restaurant offerings, it’s not uncommon to see two long rows of food trucks facing each other during lunch hour, while hundreds of people in business attire wander from truck to truck to peruse each vendor’s menu.
At Los Angeles’ Union Station, a monthly food truck event sees dozens of trucks parked around the historic building; local bands perform live music all day, and clothing and art vendors ply their trade as well.
Truck operators must obtain permits for every city they work in. Although Los Angeles residents love the trucks, some traditional restaurants have fought bitterly to keep them from parking on the street in front of them, particularly in popular areas like Miracle Mile.
Some business owners have gone so far as to buy old cars and park them in front of their restaurants, in order to keep the food trucks out; they say they will gladly pay any parking tickets, as long as it keeps their competition down the street.
But despite these setbacks, the excitement shows no sign of stopping, or even of slowing down.
“I think, when all is said and done, it’s such a growing trend,” Pardal says. “People wondered how long it would last at first, but now it’s spreading all over [America].”
Candice Yacono is a magazine and newspaper writer based in southern California.
