Archive for the ‘Shacks, Carts & Trucks’ Category
February 10, 2012
Jill: Brooklyn Flea: the weekly market that fittingly sells repurposed and crafty wares in a bank repurposed as a three-floor mall, filled to the brim with furniture, boots, hand towels and jewelry that we can only dream of owning and with people who are way cooler than you or I will ever be. Maya and I visited this past December with a mission: to visit as many of the basement food vendors as humanly possible. And although I became momentarily distracted and purchased a porcupine-screened tea towel, we completed our task with precision and professionalism. (Porcupines are obviously the new bacon-owl-mustache. Duh.)
Maya: Though the allure of the Flea has diminished for me (thanks both to the ubiquity of the mobile vendors and to my awareness of what vintage goods bought at flea markets should cost), it was worth the trip just to introduce Jill to some of New York’s premiere food-truck players. Today’s Friday Five highlights some of the things we managed to stuff in our beaks.
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Tags:Brooklyn, Brooklyn Flea, food vendors, NYC
Posted in Bargain Bin, Friday Five, In The Neighborhood, New York City, Shacks, Carts & Trucks, Table Service | 1 Comment »
November 21, 2011
It’s a strange thing, I think. My neighborhood houses some of the most creative, passionate and interesting foodies, food writers and food innovators in Columbus. What Clintonville lacks, though, are great dining establishments. It seems that for every Sage American Bistro, Ray Ray’s Hog Pit and Alana’s, we have four or five fast food chains or straight-from-the-GFS-can joints lining our streets. So when food trucks arrived to my part of the city, tipping the fare scale from “boring” and “meh” to “interesting” and “delicious”, our elected officials’ first impulse was to enforce obsolete laws that push them out of our area.
Perhaps The Coop’s location at Cliffside and Indianola is too close to the Clintonville border with Old North Columbus for our legislators to care. Or perhaps relying on the oncoming cold weather was an easier food truck deterrent. (Sound familiar, anyone?) I’m not sure why the relatively new truck owned and operated by Angie Theado seems immune to archaic laws, but I am thrilled to have this truck as a dining option in my neighborhood.
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Tags:Clintonville, Columbus, food trucks, local
Posted in Columbus, Ohio, In The Neighborhood, Shacks, Carts & Trucks, Table Service | 5 Comments »
October 14, 2011
Today’s Friday Five could easily have a million titles. Things I Crave Right Now. Things to Eat on a Rainy Autumn Evening. Why Columbus is Delicious. Browse below as you take a trip through my recent culinary adventures in the Capital city.
1. Pho at Buckeye Pho.
The city’s newest pho and bahn mi joint is only a couple of miles from my house, and I couldn’t be happier. Is it as good as my beloved Mi Li Cafe? I’ve only had one visit and feel unprepared to make a verdict. My first encounter was pretty damn good, though.
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Tags:buckeye pho, Deepwood, hot dogs, Knead, lobster, pho, Zen Cha
Posted in Columbus, Ohio, Friday Five, In The Neighborhood, Shacks, Carts & Trucks, Table Service | Leave a Comment »
July 20, 2011
As a continued part of my quest to sample as many new outdoor-drinking establishments as possible between now and August, I stopped in to the Lot at 30th Street, the Tom Colicchio-helmed beer-garden-cum-food-truck-mecca under the High Line, with two friends a few weeks ago.
The High Line, for members of our readership based elsewhere, is an elevated park, formerly train tracks, that runs up the west side of Manhattan; the Lot is located under the northern-most end and, I’d imagine, the post-stroll reward for many a visitor. Not us, however. We opted for beer, then a walk. Priorities, people.
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Tags:beer, food trucks, High Line, NYC, The Lot on 30th Street
Posted in In The Neighborhood, New York City, Shacks, Carts & Trucks, Table Service | 5 Comments »
July 7, 2011
Nothing says summer in New York like a plethora of new outdoor-drinking establishments. It was hard to decide which to try first, but when I saw this Serious Eats slideshow, promising crunchy, juicy Thai fried chicken and Eastern European sausages of various persuasions, I moved BeerParc to the top of the list.
Though the companion article to the slideshow billed the space as an “outdoor extension” of FoodParc (the food court on the ground floor of Midtown’s Eventi Hotel), I was completely unprepared to find myself drinking beer in what amounted to a mid-block passageway. This did not bode well.
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Tags:beer garden, Midtown, NYC
Posted in In The Neighborhood, New York City, Shacks, Carts & Trucks, Table Service | 4 Comments »
June 17, 2011
Last fall, I went on the last Taco Truck Tour of the season hosted by Bethia of Columbus Food Adventures. A simple, yet lovely, part of the tour was the fact that I did not have to drive. The downside to this is that I paid absolutely no attention to where we were, at any point in time on the tour. Not only that, but I was so busy stuffing my face full of taco truck wares (that enhanced my perception of the genre by 150%) and trying to take pictures, that I didn’t write down any of the details. Although I showed up to class with enthusiasm, I would have failed a multiple choice test given at the end. The Taco Truck Tour is a course I’m going to have to retake. This week’s Friday Five are five images from the tour (ones that I’m hoping will earn me extra credit for the next time around). Captions are provided with the assistance of Professor Bethia Woolf.
1. La Popular, Wilson & Broad.
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Posted in Columbus, Ohio, Friday Five, In The Neighborhood, Shacks, Carts & Trucks, Table Service | 3 Comments »
June 3, 2011
I’ve spent some time being jealous of my friends who work downtown. First, they don’t have to drive. (I’ve been known to loudly chant encouraging words to myself when dealing with the 315 and 270 merge on my way home from work: “I hate to change lanes, but I can change lanes!”) I dream of a simple bus ride and the company of a book or Twitter on my commute. A second point of jealousy is their access to El Arepazo, one of the best (and busiest) lunch destinations in Columbus. I’ve only been able to visit a few times (thanks, jury duty!) but every time, I swoon over their patacon (a Venezuelan dish of fried plantains topped with tilapia, banana peppers, avocado, lettuce and cheese) and drool over their cilantro sauce (available in mild and spicy). Alas, my work in the grocery land doesn’t free me to leave for lunch and my opportunities to shove my face full of their deliciousness are few and far between.
Happy news! While Carlos and the folks from El Arepazo haven’t done anything about my (relatively short) commute, they have made it easier for me to enjoy their wares, via their new food truck, Yerba Buena Latin Grill, which is parked on High Street near Glenmont on the north end of Clintonville. I visited Saturday and sampled most of the menu. I will be back. Often. Today’s Friday Five is a small selection of my favorite items from the truck.
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Tags:Columbus, food trucks, Friday Five
Posted in Bargain Bin, Columbus, Ohio, Friday Five, In The Neighborhood, Shacks, Carts & Trucks | 2 Comments »
May 13, 2011
Last night, the Columbus chapter of Pecha Kucha presented the 17th incarnation of the Japanese-born event in a warehouse on the west side of the city. Pecha Kucha is a simple concept that is difficult to pronounce. In short, a dozen or so passionate people speak for 6 minutes and 40 seconds on a topic of their choice in front of a 20-slide powerpoint presentation they’ve prepared. Right now, Pecha Kucha exists in 412 cities throughout the world. (Maybe we can coerce Maya to present at the one in New York!) As someone who frequently misses being in school, I’ve fallen in love with the event; it’s like two hours of graduate school without the forms and work. As a semi-new member of the committee that puts the quarterly celebration of creativity together, I signed up to take pictures that document the event. I tried to get a variety of the goings-on of the evening, but it was (naturally) difficult for me to stray from the mobile food court set up in the parking lot.
For today’s Friday Five, I present: a few of my favorite food images from Pecha Kucha.
1. The Perfect Trio.
I spied a few fellow foodies tucked away in a corner, sampling the wares of Families Mobile Kitchen (the new chicken and waffles truck) and Mojo TaGo (a “gringo” taco truck specializing in Baja-style tacos).
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Tags:chicken and waffles, Pecha Kucha, street food, tacos
Posted in Columbus, Ohio, Friday Five, In The Neighborhood, Shacks, Carts & Trucks | 1 Comment »
May 9, 2011
When my friend Sarah and I used to play pool, our strategy was to divvy out two tasks: one of us would be “Trash Talk,” while the other ended up being responsible for “Skills.” We were mediocre, at best, and the trash talk definitely didn’t do much to help the game. In the food arena, it’s much easier for me to gain the ability to talk (in general) than it is to develop skills. I can read, taste and travel to be able to speak on a topic, but I lack the patience to actually make many of the things I love to eat. Ask me to steadily cut a crepe, dip anything into chocolate or pan fry something using only wooden skewers? No thank you. I’ll leave that to the professionals.
When I first learned of Freshstreet’s setting up shop inside of Mikey’s Late Night Slice to make takoyaki, I was bitter. Last summer, I’d grown accustomed to their food cart, bearing Japanese-style pork belly crepes, being within walking distance of my house on most Sunday afternoons. My inner trash talk was silenced this past Sunday when I encountered my first-ever taste of their takoyaki.
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Tags:Columbus, Japanese, shacks, squid, street food, takoyaki
Posted in Bargain Bin, Columbus, Ohio, In The Neighborhood, Shacks, Carts & Trucks | 3 Comments »
April 19, 2011
Way back in the dark ages, before cell phones with built-in GPS, Jill and I trekked all over San Francisco in search of that city’s famed Mexican fare. Our destination was the Mission District, our route circuitous, but the pay-off was worth it: For an afternoon spent navigating an unfamiliar public transit system and wandering foreign streets, we got great burritos and wound up on a beach, brown-paper-bagging beer and watching the sunset. Not half bad.
Our establishment of choice was a stationary one, but imagine the trouble the geographically challenged (read: us) would’ve had tracking down mobile vendors in the days before Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare allowed them to broadcast their locations to the masses. These days, it should go without saying that social media is an integral part of most savvy restaurateurs’ publicity efforts, but it’s arguably even more important for the food trucks and pop-up spots that are running rampant all over town.
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Tags:food trucks, Korean tacos, NYC
Posted in Bargain Bin, In The Neighborhood, New York City, Shacks, Carts & Trucks | Leave a Comment »
