The Truck Food Cookbook: 150 Recipes and Ramblings from America's Best Restaurants on Wheels

558 Pages·2012·15.72 MB·English

by  John T Edge

The Truck Food Cookbook
150 RECIPES and RAMBLINGS from AMERICA’S BEST
RESTAURANTS on WHEELS
John T. Edge
Recipes and Photographs by Angie Mosier
WORKMAN PUBLISHING • NEW YORK
“We cook food that hits our customers like a bong hit.”
— ROY CHOI, LOS ANGELES
“My sense of taste is at full strength only when I’m standing up.”
— CALVIN TRILLIN, NEW YORK CITY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The cast of characters behind The Truck Food Cookbook was large
and generous:
Angie Mosier shot the photographs, wrangled the recipes, and smiled, even in a
hostage situation (see page 88). Judith Winfrey and Natalie Jordi helped her.
Deep thanks to Peter Workman and Bob Miller for their ink-stained vision. At
Workman, Suzanne Rafer drove the truck, abetted on the editorial and design
side by Jean-Marc Troadec, Lisa Hollander, Erin Klabunde, Barbara Mateer,
David Schiller, and Peggy Gannon. Over in publicity, sales, and marketing, the
crew of engaged and enthusiastic collaborators included Selina Meere, Page
Edmunds, Walter Weinz, Jessica Wiener, Jenny Mandel and the special sales
team, Marilyn Barnett and the folks in gift sales, and the digital crew headed by
Andrea Fleck-Nisbit.
As usual, my agent, David Black, kicked butt.
Rob Long drove me about Los Angeles. Warren Hansen, the cart maven of
Madison, Wisconsin, shared freely. Jane Thompson, Christian Krogstad, Kelly
Rodgers, and Gretchen Barron unveiled Portland. Robb Walsh and Allison Cook
showed me the greasy side of Houston. Mark Estes, Claudia Alarcon, and
Virginia Wood shared Austin tips. With Ruth Lafler, I walked Fruitvale. Andrea
Weigl drove me in Durham. Rick Nelson talked me through Minneapolis.
Brad Parsons shepherded me about Seattle. Jonathan Kauffman introduced
me to taco buses. Peter McKee indulged me a cream cheese dog. Leslie Kelly
and Nancy Leson drank and talked with me. Kirsten Hines kept an eye out in
San Francisco. With Caleb Zigas, I strolled the Mission. Ed Levine and Zack
Brooks tramped through Manhattan with me. With Gary Nabhan and Janos
Wilder, I ate Sonoran hot dogs.
In addition to Angie’s photographs, we turned to a few other good folks,
including Jessi Langsen, who shot Koo’s Grill, Matthew Bufford, who shot Bike
Basket Pies, and Marshall Wright, who shot El Naranjo. Kate Medley captured
Durham. Lou Weinert trained his lens for my author portrait. The Museum of the
City of New York shared the Berenice Abbott photo on page 182.
I wrote the great majority of this book while on a fellowship at Escape to
Create, in Seaside, Florida. Malayne Demars, Marsha Dowler, Linda Cook,
Lynne Nesmith, and Karen Holland were marvels. Joyce Wilson, sage of the
Gulf Coast, made me feel welcome. So did Robert Davis, street food advocate
Gulf Coast, made me feel welcome. So did Robert Davis, street food advocate
and new urbanism pioneer.
Small portions of this book appeared, in decidedly different forms, in the
Oxford American, Gourmet, Garden & Gun, The New York Times, and Men’s
Health.
In honor of the work done by the Street Vendor Project in New York City,
and La Cocina in San Francisco, the author and Workman Publishing have made
donations to each concern.
DEDICATION:
FOR MY WIFE, BLAIR, WHO ALWAYS WELCOMED ME HOME WITH SALADS...
CONTENTS
Introduction: STREET EATS ETHICS
FRIES & PIES
WAFFLES & THEIR KIN
BRUNCH ON WHEELS
UNEXPECTED PLEASURES
SANDWICH UP!
HOT DOGS (with a Bow to Burgers)
TACOPALOOZA
ROLLING IN SWEETS
Afterword: MY LIFE AS A LUCKY DOG
CONVERSION TABLES
INDEX
STREET ECONOMICS: What It Costs
IT TAKES $900,000 to open a Chipotle Mexican Grill. A SUBWAY
will set you back as much as $200,000. The startup cost for a wheeled
restaurant, on the other hand, is often a fraction of what’s needed to
open a sitdown restaurant.
A standard-issue street food truck, purchased new, will set you
back $100,000 or more. But eBay is chockablock with ads for used
food trucks that can be had for $10,000 and used food carts that can
be had for $2,000. (Back in 2002, along with a friend, I bought a hot
dog–shaped cart for $3,000, but that’s a long story, one you can read
about on page 2.)
Then there’s the matter of permits. New York City, for example,
allots just three thousand or so food vendor licenses each year. As
you might expect, they’re traded by way of a robust black market,
fetching anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000. A city like Austin is more
hospitable to vendors; there approximately one thousand licensed
vendors pay $200 or so for their permits.
STREET EATS ETHICS
I was in Saigon, Vietnam, in 2007, eating curbside bánh xèo and bun
cha, when I read that the Supreme Court of India had decided to ban
street sellers from cooking dishes on the sidewalks of New Delhi. The
move was understood to be part of an effort to sweep clean India’s
capital in advance of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
That decision was met with derision. Such a change would be unmanageable.
Such an edict would be unenforceable in a city where, by some estimates,
100,000 food vendors work the city streets, selling paneers and kachoris and
samosas. Street food, as citizens of New Delhi had known it for generations, was
to be transformed. City officials planned a licensing system for hawkers. They
spoke of food courts of the sort found in Singapore and other Southeast Asian
cities. They revealed that under the new system curbside vendors would begin
cities. They revealed that under the new system curbside vendors would begin
paying taxes.
Cooks at the curb in Vietnam are well-equipped.
Sitting on that curb in Saigon, I thought of home. Back in the States, after a
long break, a nascent street food movement was gathering steam. Cities were
loosening regulations—not tightening them—in an effort to make city
streetscapes more vital, more appealing. Young chefs were chucking fine-dining
aspirations and opting, instead, to dish the culinary equivalent of the Great
American Novel from retrofitted taco trucks. Recent Mexican immigrants were
winning Anglo audiences for Sonoran-style hot dogs, stippled with jalapeño
sauce.
In Vietnam, I saw a country with a vital street food scene, a place where local
food and street food were one, where economic necessities dictated a
dependence on local farmers and artisans that, back in the States, would appear a
mere pipe dream. In many ways, Vietnam looked like the promised land of curb
cuisine. And yet, it was in Vietnam that I got a glimpse, through developments
in India, at just how precarious life for a street cook can be, and by extension,
just how fragile the street food ecosystem is.
INSPIRED, CURIOUS, AND HUNGRY, I BEGAN
PLOTTING THE BOOK YOU NOW HOLD IN
YOUR HANDS.
Travels in Vietnam did not constitute the sum total of my street food
experience. I had, through the years, eaten my fair share of cilantro and onion-
capped tacos al pastor and nori-wrapped planks of Spam musubi. And I had
walked the streets of Oaxaca, Mexico, eating tlayudas from a late-night stall,
perched at the gates of the cathedral.
More important, I had worked the other side of the aisle, too. Over the course
of three nights in New Orleans, a stint that ended early in the morning on a New
Year’s Day, I had worked a wienie-shaped Lucky Dogs cart in the French
Quarter, selling hot dogs to the late-night throngs. That experience, an account
of which closes this book, presaged this project, too.
Lucky Dog vendors feed the street parade.
Introducing Dunce Dogs
A FEW YEARS passed between my time on the streets in New Orleans and the
summer afternoon when I bought my own wienie-shaped hot dog cart, and
installed it on the square in my hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. Along with a
couple friends, including Andy Harper, I launched Dunce Dogs. Andy, who has
a doctorate in environmental history, handled logistical and technical matters.
My wife, Blair, a poet, painter, and college lecturer, coined our motto, “Think
Genius, Eat Dunce.” I wrote an operations manual to help employees understand