The best ceviche in Los Angeles comes off of a roach coach that is routinely parked near the courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles. For twenty years Angelinos in the know have found the taco trucks with the best Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan cuisine that our city can offer. Before RA I used to run to Mulholland Drive every Wednesday and eat burritos at a taco truck that made me feel like I was visiting another country. I loved it, and to a degree I still do.
Then came the fusion trucks and the hipsters. Mike Prasad took the Kogi BBQ truck and convinced LA that coleslaw on a taco is delicious (it isn’t but it does prove that Mike is a genius). Every digital event had food trucks roaming through. Then came grilled cheese trucks, cupcake trucks, dim sum trucks, sushi trucks and now even Canters has a truck. Everywhere you look there is a food truck and they are not parked in communities they support.
When Save Our Taco Trucks launched I was a supporter. I loved the quick food and the obscure locations. The trucks seemed to be near construction sites and industrial zones.
Now there is a truck at my corner every day. They sell salad. Across the street from the salad truck is a salad restaurant. Within three square blocks are another dozen restaurants. The restaurants in my neighborhood do things for my neighborhood. They provide pleasing exteriors, they provide local jobs, they tend to support the local schools, they are part of the tax base, they create a reason for us to get out of our cars and walk around so that we can bump into people.
I don’t know if I’m getting old or if it’s reasonable to not want transient businesses in my neighborhood.
Where are you at on the food trucks? And I swear to all that is holy, anyone who tells you that Korean food belongs in a taco is not to be trusted.
Photo via Flickr Muy Yum Creative Commons
Don’t even get me started on fusion food. What the F is a Thai Burrito? Please tell the east coast to get their shit together.
Wouldn’t that be a peanut butter and ramen noodle burrito?
When I retired from being a SysAdmin, I became a Big Truck Driver. Over-The-Road in an 18-Wheeler… We park in Industrial Areas. “Roach Coaches” are our friends. And because of them, some of the best slogans are formed. When I was waiting for a Warehouse to open in Miami, FL one morning I had something that looked like a breakfast burrito from a Cuban Food Truck. When I asked him what kind of meat was inside it he uttered the immortal words, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” So now you know… Please don’t steal all the Industrial Roach Coaches. Learn to cook yourself…
Please delete that last sentence. That’s not humorous. I want the funny to stand out.
Those are the ones I learned to love. Nothing is quite so delicious as a burrito roadside. But the salad truck is irritating me to no end.
I have to agree with you. It’s bad for restaurant business. Here we don’t have taco trucks because #1, we live in a small town and #2, for our small town there are 4 Mexican restaurants that I can count on hand. Now that’s not to say we don’t have our own food truck, but it’s one of those pull-behind-a-truck trailers and it’s southern bbq from a southern man who can cook up the best bbq this town has ever tasted. He parks his trailer in one spot near downtown and stays there.
I just moved back home (to Miami) after a decade and have discovered that food trucks are hip and cool-when did this happen? They have this thing on Friday nights where people wait and watch facebook or twitter for the announcement of where that Friday night’s “secret” venue would be held…And people go there and bring beach chairs and what not. Since when did food trucks become hip? I’m not even going to get into the long hours a family member of mine who actually owns a lunch truck puts in-but his is just the regular old fashioned kind you find at construction sites, not the hipsters newest eatery.
Miami is where the Cuban food truck with the meat burrito (that I talked about earlier) was. It was good. But he didn’t have any fancy coffee. Where was it that I saw all those fancy espresso machines on the food trucks? I’ll bet it was down in Florida. Maybe around Datona Beach.
a salad truck??!! that is not right. at all.
the fun on the truck food is finding them, meaning that they should not be static for that long.
oh well.
Salad?? wow.
I haven’t experienced this too much…Where I’m from it’s mostly smoked meat or BBQ type foods offered…Although, yeah, they are in the same places all the time.
It didn’t occur to me that being movable as they are takes away from the neighborhood.
they are really good. i really like the food trucks. promise you gonna like it too. they serve healthy and delicious foods.
So now you are forcing the New York Times to investigate your opinions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/sunday-review/17foodtrucks.html