Uggs, laced back shirts, crocks, etc. These are all trends. One of today’s trends is the increasing industry of food trucks.
Food trucks originally became popular when, in the current recession, few chefs could afford to begin their own restaurants. Thus, the much more affordable food trucks became a popular alternative to owning a restaurant.
These mobile restaurants employ a different approach to that of your average restaurant. They go to their customers rather than waiting for their customers to come to them. Often times they even incorporate social media into their advertising. For instance, food truck employees will post on Twitter where they will be serving for the day so that their followers know where to find them.
Since food trucks are self-owned, they often times will be seen randomly around the city and surrounding area. This summer, however, the St. Louis food truck association began to make events to gather many of the food trucks in one place, making it easier for consumers to find them. They even held a competition where attendees voted on their favorite item in each food category.
The most popular events have been the “Food Truck Parties,” where different food trucks all park in one of the area parks. There is also live music and entertainment. It was at one of these “Food Truck Parties” that the best food truck shined. Unfortunately, with the end of summer, these events have now come to an end, so people must seek out a specific truck in order to taste that cuisine.
Best Dish: On solely taste it was a tie between Guerilla’s Adobo Chicken and Chop Shop’s F-150. However, most students don’t bring $11 to a food truck, so Guerilla with its lower prices got the overall best. The chicken adobo is a traditional Filipino dish made with chicken thighs slowly braised in soy sauce, garlic, bay leaves, black pepper, and vinegar served over a bed of jasmine rice. While the F-150 is a sushi roll (in usual chop shop style it isn’t cut into smaller pieces) with tempura shrimp, snow crab, cucumber with a wasabi aioli and served with their signature lime chili popcorn. The fish was definitely fresh, and the sauce and popcorn was creative.
Best Dessert: Sarah’s Cake Shop won with its hot chocolate cupcake. A chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream on top as well as for a filling topped off with a toasted homemade marshmallow. The cake was moist, the buttercream smooth, and the homemade marshmallow puts every store bought marshmallow to shame. Sweet Divine also did well with its Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough cupcake with delectable chocolate cake and cookie dough filling. The frosting however, had a grainy texture to it and all that sugar gave it an overly sweet taste. The price, however, was a plus, seeing as they were both $3.
Best Drink: Guerilla also won this category for its one-inch punch. The truck uses Filipino ingredients to make an original beverage. The combination of pineapple juice, blackcurrant juice, honey, sugar, coconut milk and fresh mint sounds disgusting, but surprisingly worked perfectly. The drink was slightly less thick than milk and even looked appealing with its bright purple color. New York Banh mi also had a delicious fruit punch flavored soda that many of the children also seemed to be enjoying seeing as they were too busy chugging to speak, but it isn’t made in-house. This put the flavorful soda in second place.