Thursday, June 7, 2012

In deepening my corpus of work on mobile food, I wanted to offer the following theory: roach coaches are so alluring because they conjure memories of ice cream trucks. You remember the wonderment, I bet, of peering up at the counter and watching your money disappear into a darkened space, only to reemerge as something delicious. The modern food truck is that experience, reborn without the unconscionable prices and off-key music.

There are some drawbacks, certainly. Lack of consistency is one thing. If you discover a favorite dish, it may not be on next week’s menu, which is contingent on what ingredients the proprietor can secure at any given time. There is sometimes the suspicion, too, that dishes are esoteric simply to be esoteric. Case in point: why in fresh fuck is there a thick slice of pineapple in my Angus cheeseburger? And then there’s the issue of cleanliness, such as when one of my buddies was felled for an evening by a renegade pulled pork sandwich.

But the tonnage of good ultimately outweighs the bad, and so I seek out these nomadic restaurants regularly. The flip side of inconsistency is variety, and being able to choose between comfort food, Italian heroes, cupcakes, pan-Asian tacos, and who knows what else keeps it interesting. The owners of these trucks are friendly, which only makes the warm, fuzzy feeling of supporting local businesses even warmer and fuzzier. There’s a different vibe than, say, being served at a typical sit-down place. It’s more like getting a homemade lunch from your ma, and it reverberates at just the right nostalgic frequencies. Thanks, moms.