Food Trucks Read online

  It was 1984 and Philly’s vending regulations, or lack thereof, created lawlessness something like the Wild West. With no assigned locations for carts or trucks, owners would rise at the crack of dawn to race to their preferred spot, and if someone else had already set up camp, yelling matches or even knock-down, drag-outs weren’t uncommon. Dean is a beefy guy who looks more like a short-order cook at a Greek diner than a pescatarian who sells tabouli for a living, but his Zen nature prevailed and eventually even became his calling card. His cart became popular with the kind of liberal college kids likely to backpack Europe and volunteer for Greenpeace, and they supported his venture as it grew to two carts, each with a steady stream of health-conscious customers. The falafel has been a big seller since day one (well, technically day three). The crispy little chickpea fritters have a good dose of onion and cumin, plus fresh parsley, and they’re made from a recipe Dean’s brother got off a Lebanese guy who ran a falafel shop in Manhattan. They’re neck and neck with the tofu meatballs, baked rounds of extra-firm tofu bound with egg and packed with plenty of basil, garlic, and oregano. You won’t fool a Soprano with these, but they’re surprisingly flavorful, even for a devout meat eater.

  With mellow music piped through tiny speakers, a counter of vegan baked goods, and an ice chest packed with organic sodas and green teas, Dean has transferred the vibe of a blue-state co-op to a little wooden box on wheels. He’s been known to ask customers how their “energy” is after they’ve finished their lunch and admits to doing yoga and meditation, but he’s loath to call himself a hippie. “I would say that I’m an earthling,” Dean says. “A lot of folks assume I’m of a certain political persuasion and I always say, ‘First of all, I’m a businessman, and I personally tend to want to support a smaller business rather than a bigger one. But at the same time I do want to grow, I want to see if I can take this beyond Philly. I’m fifty, and I have a five-year goal of not having to be here to run the cart every day. Still, I’m sure I’d miss it.”

  Ode to Magic Carpet’s Tofu Meatballs

  Serves 4

  The cart’s owner wants to keep his recipes under wraps, so the following is an approximation of one of his signature dishes.

  1 (14-ounce) package firm tofu

  1 egg, lightly beaten

  ⅓ cup bread crumbs

  ½ small onion, minced

  1½ teaspoons chopped fresh Italian parsley

  1½ teaspoons chopped fresh oregano

  1 teaspoon salt

  ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

  ½ teaspoon granulated garlic

  2 cups favorite tomato sauce, store-bought or homemade

  ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  4 cups cooked rice or pasta

  Remove the tofu from its package and discard the liquid. Wrap the tofu in a few paper towels, place on a plate, and rest a heavy pan or cast iron skillet on top for 30 minutes. Unwrap the tofu and set aside.

  Preheat the oven to 350°F.

  In a large mixing bowl, combine the drained and pressed tofu, egg, bread crumbs, onion, herbs, and spices, mixing well with your hands until thoroughly combined. Form the tofu into balls the size of golf balls and arrange in a single layer in a baking dish. Transfer to the oven and bake for 20 minutes.

  Remove the dish from the oven and increase the heat to 450°F (or preheat the broiler, if you have one). Spoon the tomato sauce over the top of the meatballs and sprinkle with the Parmesan. Place the dish back in the oven and continue to cook until the cheese has just melted and is lightly browned, 3 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve with the rice or pasta.

  ( SIDE DISH )

  After Drew Crockett got himself a history degree from Penn, he sold his dusty books and followed the scent of money to New York, where he somehow wound up in banking. There, inspired by the Mudd Truck, he hatched a plan for a gourmet coffee truck and started pestering Philly’s powers-that-be for a spot in University City. After a couple of years of getting put on hold, being told he was either on a waiting list or just out of luck, Crockett hopped a train to his alma mater, found an empty spot along University Avenue (in the shadow of a Starbucks, no less), and marched down to city hall with permit applications and money in hand. His HubBub Coffee Company (University Ave. between Walnut and Spruce Sts.) opened in fall of 2009, a fire engine–red truck blaring music that’ll wake you up almost as much as the Stumptown coffee, sold either as potent cups of drip or shots, or as a cappuccino or latte pulled from a fancy La Marzocco espresso machine. Flaky croissants and killer cinnamon rolls are trucked in from suburban Narbeth’s Au Fournil bakery, the standard-bearer for Philly-area pastries and proof that Crockett studied up.

  Irie Food

  FIND IT: W Montgomery Ave. just east of N Broad St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  As an undergrad at Temple in the early 1980s, Marcella Folkes and her fellow Jamaican friends hit up the food trucks along 13th and Montgomery like the rest of the student body, scarfing down egg-and-cheese sandwiches in the morning, sometimes stopping for a cheesesteak or hoagie at the end of the day. But they craved the tongue-tingling spices of their own foods and were getting pretty sick of greasy pepperoni slices. “We had this group called SOCA, Student Organization for Caribbean Affairs, and we did cultural events and of course parties, but we really wanted to have a truck,” Marcella recalls. “It was always pizzas. We wanted our own cultural food.”

  They didn’t get it. Regardless, Marcella graduated with a business degree and went on to open a trucking company with her brother, who had come to America from Kingston along with their parents so that Marcella could attend Temple. The business was enough to sustain the family over the past twenty years, but periodically Marcella and her West Indian friends would stroll Temple’s campus, scanning the food trucks for something, anything, Caribbean. What they saw were the same old trucks—literally, many of the exact same trucks—selling cut fruit, hoagies, and, yes, pizza. Finally, the lightbulb went off for the Jamaican who wanted a Jamaican truck … and just so happened to own a trucking company. But it turned out that running a food truck on campus was a job not unlike the vice presidency—you only get the coveted gig if someone dies. One man’s heart attack is another man’s … food truck? “There was a truck here for over twenty years, like many of the trucks,” Marcella explains. “It was called Campus Grub, and the owner was tired of the business. He was getting old, and then he had a couple of heart attacks, so he decided he wanted to retire. We went to the university with a proposal, went to city hall to get our menu approved and get our license, set up the truck, and opened Irie Food in October 2009. Finally, we have a West Indian truck at Temple.”

  As lucky as Marcella was to find her spot, she’s not going to complain about its location. At the far west end of Montgomery’s cluster of trucks, it doesn’t get nearly as much foot traffic as the main drag near 12th and 13th. Plus, surrounded on both sides by tall buildings, the strip where Irie Food sits is nicknamed “the wind tunnel,” and it’s noticeably a few degrees cooler than its neighboring blocks. So Marcella isn’t taking any chances on being overlooked: the spic-and-span step van glows like an electric orange stabbed with a massive Jamaican flag, the unmistakable trinity of green, black, and yellow that calls out “get your jerk here” from a block away. Luckily for Marcella, Temple’s West Indian student body, which has tripled in size since her days, aren’t big on pizza either. With SOCA still going strong (now with Twitter!), word traveled fast and support for Irie Food has been widespread. It helps that Marcella can cook.

  Splashes of vinegar turn her jerk rub into a paste, and she massages those chicken legs and thighs like a Swede looking for a tip, infusing the meat with the bright heat of Scotch bonnets, woodsy thyme, and fragrant allspice. Like the oxtails, the chicken marinates overnight, but the nubby hunks of tail take on a full dose of clove and garlic. Marcella’s stew chicken falls from the bone into a pool of brown gravy similar to the oxtail’s sl
urry, and her curry chicken is stained marigold from turmeric and fully flavored with toasted cumin. All are piled onto red beans and rice that hide a hint of coconut milk in the grain, and all are memorable. The Jamaican patties and the coco bread are the only things not made on the truck (and, unfortunately, it shows), but the clusters of West Indian students and locals who find their way to the truck don’t seem to mind; they gobble them up anyway, just happy to have them. A separate American breakfast touts bacon-and-egg sandwiches, and, yes, you can get a hot dog for a dollar here, but no one seems to pay Marcella’s safety net menu any mind. And why would they? They’ve been seeing that stuff for years.

  Irie Food’s Oxtail Stew

  Serves 4

  2 pounds oxtails

  1 teaspoon garlic powder

  1 teaspoon onion powder

  1 teaspoon soy sauce

  ¼ teaspoon Goya adobo seasoning

  ¼ teaspoon Lawry’s Seasoned Salt

  2 sprigs fresh thyme

  1 onion, chopped

  1 carrot, coarsely chopped

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Cooked rice, for serving

  Clean the oxtail pieces thoroughly by rinsing them under cold water and trimming away the excess fat.

  In a bowl, stir together the garlic powder, onion powder, soy sauce, adobo seasoning, and seasoned salt to make a paste. Rub the paste into the oxtails. Place in a covered container and let marinate in the refrigerator overnight.

  Heat a Dutch oven or large pot with a lid over medium-high heat until nearly smoking. Remove the oxtail pieces from the marinade and brown them on all sides. Carefully add enough water to the Dutch oven to just cover the meat, add the thyme, cover, and lower the heat to medium-low. Add the onion, carrot, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally to prevent the meat from sticking to the bottom, until the oxtails are tender and the meat begins to separate from the bone, 1½ to 2 hours. Serve over the rice.

  Yue Kee

  FIND IT: S 38th St. between Walnut and Spruce Sts., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Bi Pang has been compared to the Soup Nazi for her gruff demeanor. Prying more than a mumble or grunt out of her husband, Tsz Pong, is like getting a pearl from an oyster. But none of the Chinese college kids milling around the couple’s battered old food truck seem to care, or even to notice. They’re here to get full on cheap, home-style Chinese cooking, and they’re happy to fork over four bucks for massive Styrofoam containers of steaming mapo tofu, Beijing hot noodles, or rib tips in black bean sauce. These kids know what’s up, and Yue Kee is for them.

  The wheezing Grumman step van the couple has operated for more than twenty years is a quintessential Philly food truck, a hardworking clunker that endures long hours, stands up to year-round weather, and gives its owners just enough room to somehow pull off a massive menu of anything customers might want. Yue Kee offers nearly a hundred dishes, mainly Cantonese but veering into Szechuan, Hunan, and, occasionally, into Tsz’s Dandong upbringing via dishes like his father’s steamed pork belly and ginger chicken. And while the menu reads like the typical, overwhelmingly dense roster required of ’80s-era chop suey houses (beef with broccoli, chicken with broccoli, pork with broccoli), somehow Tsz pulls from his arsenal of pastes, oils, sauces, and herbs to give most of the dishes a subtle distinctiveness. Pity the uninitiated who write off the truck as another campus roach coach, or worse yet, order within their comfort zone and wind up with egg rolls and fried rice that are pedestrian at best.

  Getting Tsz to come clean on how certain dishes can be complex revelations while others taste like a joke played on dumb Americans is like asking a magician what’s under the hat. “Most customers are students and most of them are Chinese,” Tsz says. “So this not American, only Chinese food. But Chinese know Chinese food and Americans know my truck for cheap. No Chinese truck is better than me in this way.” As he talks, Bi stands over a sink near the rear of the truck, keeping one suspicious eye on this silly woman asking questions and the other on the snow peas she’s cleaning. A customer approaches the window and Bi saunters over, yelling out, “Yeah? Okay. Yeah? What you want?” Earlier this morning when YueKee rattled into the parking spot for which Tsz pays $3,000 a year, the same spot he’s held for twenty-one years, some rube had unknowingly stolen their space. Tsz had a tow truck there within minutes, and the only smile he cracked all day spread across his face as he said, “This spot only for me.”

  Now that lunch is in full swing, Bi hollers out orders in Chinese to Tsz, who works his stove like an octopus, seemingly doing eight things at once. Spareribs that have been hacked into inch-long pieces get browned in a giant wok showing years of battle scars. A spoonful of fermented black beans is followed by brown sugar and dark soy sauce, all clinging to the bony hunks of pork with a few flicks of the wrist. Tsz slides the sauced rib tips onto a mound of white rice waiting in a container and immediately turns back to the stove, where ground pork is browning with ginger and garlic on another burner. He dips a spoon into a massive can filled with the secret weapon of stir-fry cooks: ground bean sauce, a gloopy paste of fermented soybeans, salt, sugar, and sesame oil that carries the rich umami flavor the Japanese find in miso. Crimson chile oil and cubes of firm tofu get tossed in next, a little sesame oil and white pepper last. Poured over a tangle of lo mein, the Beijing hot noodles are ready. Bi hands them over to a chubby-cheeked student waiting patiently with his friends, all of them Chinese-American, all of them holding Styrofoam containers from Yue Kee. They walk a few feet toward a student commons before deciding to squat on a few stairs and dig in. Chopsticks fly, food gets shoveled in less time than it took Tsz to cook it, containers get tossed in the bin in front of the truck, and each of the boys gives a quick nod and a “xiexie” of thanks to Bi as they move on. “Yeah, yeah, okay,” she barks, her attention on the next customer. “Okay, hi, yeah. What you want?”

  Beijing Hot Noodles

  Serves 4

  You can find ground bean sauce, a gloopy paste of fermented soybeans, salt, sugar, and sesame oil, in Asian grocery stores or order a jar online.

  2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil

  2 tablespoons minced garlic

  1 tablespoon minced ginger

  2 green onions, minced

  1 pound ground pork

  ¼ cup ground bean sauce

  1 (12-ounce) package firm tofu, drained and cubed

  1 tablespoon chile oil

  1 teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons sugar

  1½ teaspoons sesame oil

  ½ teaspoon ground white or black pepper

  1 pound lo mein noodles, cooked

  ½ cucumber, peeled and diced

  Heat the oil in a wok or heavy, deep sauté pan over high heat for 1 minute. Add the garlic and ginger and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the green onions and ground pork and cook until the pork is browned, about 5 minutes.

  Add the ground bean sauce, tofu, chile oil, salt, and sugar and toss to coat, cooking for 2 to 3 minutes more. Add the sesame oil and pepper, stir, and turn off the heat.

  Divide the lo mein noodles among individual plates, place the cucumber alongside, and top the noodles with the pork and tofu mixture. Serve immediately.

  ( SIDE DISH )

  The stretch of Spruce Street between 36th and 38th Streets is home to nearly a dozen food trucks, spaced out along both sides of Spruce and offering more global variety than the strip of trucks along Ludlow. Mexican, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Indian, and American eats are all represented here, but the trucks that stand out for character alone include the aptly named Fresh Fruit Salad—nearly hidden by crates of mangos and melons that are constantly plucked from to produce three-dollar mixed fruit plates—and The Real Le Anh Chinese Food, owned and operated by smiling Le Anh To, a wisecracking Vietnamese-born Chinese woman who emigrated to America in the late ’70s and opened this pan-Asian truck in 1981. Her stir-fries are good if a bit greasy, quick and cheap evolutions of Chinese classics. To’s truck is th
e oldest on Spruce, but it’s not the only one that has adapted over the years: Mexi Philly caters to Penn’s vegans with tofu tacos and decidedly Anglo-aimed crunchy shells à la Taco Bell, while Lucky’s Mexican has met popular demand by supplementing its taco and burrito lineup with channa masala, a holdover from when the cart was run by an India native.

  Washington, D.C.

  It should come as little surprise that our nation’s capital, the epicenter of ideas becoming law, enacted the earliest regulations on mobile food vending, with rules first appearing on the city books in 1890. In the century that followed the industry boomed, with peddlers setting up carts nearly side by side to cater to the steady stream of tourists looking for sustenance between a stroll through the Smithsonian and a stop at the Lincoln Memorial. By the mid-1990s there were close to three thousand vendors citywide, and the lack of laws assigning them to specific sites had created competition that regularly fueled physical violence. “It was first-come, first-serve, so naturally vendors were fighting for prime locations, bringing friends with baseball bats, carrying guns.… There were serious altercations with numerous people going to jail as a result,” says Sam Williams, vending and special events coordinator for the District’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. Williams could be considered the Eliot Ness of D.C.’s street vending, using his position to restore order. A previous regime decided to deal with the increasing lawlessness by issuing a moratorium on vending licenses in 1998, and although that effectively reduced the number of vendors to about six hundred, it didn’t solve what Williams and others later identified as the three main problems: the lack of assigned spaces, the monopoly of cart depots (where vendors are required by law to park overnight), and the homogeneity of the food being sold on the streets.