ah, the food truck craze. it’s interesting to see the back and forth over whether it’s a fad, whether it’s good or bad for businesses, or the city, if they’re parking or serving illegally, blah blah blah. All that seems like a lot of whining, frankly.
in the past few weeks we’ve gone on a bit of a food truck spree. several we drove to specifically because we wanted to try them: frysmith‘s fries with mediterranean beef or thai chicken were excellent; lee’s philly makes a decent sandwich, and the gogi beef variety is not bad.
i’m lucky enough that a few have found the neighborhood where i work, so i’ve had a killer cheesesteak from south philly experience, fantastic saltado from lomo arigato, and well, a decent effort at the dim sum truck.
then there was the week i took off in january and went to a new one almost every day on wilshire for lunch. barbie’s q hooked me up with some yummy tri-tip sandwich action and india jones slung some tasty chicken frankies (like a bombay version of a burrito).
my favorite might be nom nom though, just because there’s hardly anywhere you can even get banh mi (vietnamese sandwiches) near where i live.
overdone? yeah, you might say that. it has all the signs of a gold rush that’ll get saturated and over-exploited and end up leaving people cold and bitter. and possibly hungry. we can make jokes about not eating in restaurants anymore, or be angry at cops who give citations and keep us from trying out the ones we’ve been waiting to come to our corner, but it all seems immature. it’s a new entrepreneurial business model. aren’t small businesses the one thing america has the biggest fetish for?
what this is all about for me though is sidewalk culture. if i can walk five blocks, — in los angeles, where no one walks — to get a lunch, i’ll do it. but if there are only a few lunch spots in walking distance, i’ll get sick of those things and walk less over time. if, instead, a different truck comes by my neighborhood every day of the week, i’ll walk more often, eat out more often, possibly chat with neighbors more often while we’re waiting for our food.
it’d be stupid to think these people will destroy restaurant culture, because the food is not better, and come on, people like to sit down to eat. but there’s a unique personal element to buying from just a few people in a truck versus the formality of a restaurant, and a sense of community that comes from waiting in a group on a sidewalk that doesn’t happen when waiting for a table in a restaurant. i’m a big fan of that part of the equation, even if the dumplings aren’t quite what i’d hoped.
and until we live in the world of the fifth element, and mobile food vendors come right up to our balcony at lunch, i’ll take any chance to get out on the street and mix with some friendly fellow gluttons. bring on the trucks, i say.
