Did y’all read the article in Bon Appetit where this NYC hipster journalist went to Indianapolis to find out how much like Brooklyn it was? And how he was surprised by how cool and edgy and “authentic” the food culture had become?
That hurt me.
I can’t even count the number of times a big fancy food magazine or a chef in an enormous northern or west coast city get credit for “starting” food revolutions that small town, small city, or rural folk have known about all along or just consider it the way they like to cook. A couple of the folks whom the writer interviewed gave him an earful and called out his pomposity.
Take the food truck for example. Sure, LA, Portland or Austin maybe gets credit for making them a big, cool, part of urban American culture, and a place for higher-end, gourmet menus but I’m pretty sure people from Mississippi to Montana have been eating corn dogs and funnel cakes out of food trucks their whole lives at every small town festival they’ve ever been to. And my town had a down home fried catfish truck way back in 2002…well before it was en vogue.
Well, we just got back from Portland (AMAZING, y’all. the weather. the scenery, the locally grown and made food…) and of course, we hit up their food cart pods – tiny tracks of land where a handful to a couple dozen food trucks set up shop together. The variety of “truck food” was amazing, but I have to say the quality wasn’t ANY higher than what we can get right here. No joke.
That’s not to say that our town has fully embraced the food truck as regular eating spot thing yet. But our friends at Laurel’s own Gourmet Truck, BackRoad Bistro, are working to change that.
When Juice and Candice started up, they had to pay all kinds of silly city fees to park here or serve food there…because no one knew how to categorize them. Were they a restaurant? A one-truck Festival? A Delivery service? Geez, Bureaucracy. But finally, after making their case and clearing all the hurdles and hiccups, they’re off and running and making — I say this with absolutely no hyperbole — the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten.
For real. It stands up to every delicious thing I’ve EVER eaten from any food truck… from a Portland version of Chinese Bing Mi to an Austin Fried Avocado Taco.
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