Tagged: food trucks

Pop over to Clover for a popover

According to the Hobbits, second breakfast is the second most important meal of the day so when I found myself in Dewey Square one morning this week, it seemed only natural to get a food truck breakfast even though I had already eaten. I was tempted by Area Four’s breakfast sandwich, but it seemed on the heavy side for a second breakfast, so I returned to Clover for one of their massive popovers.

Clover Popover

A popover, for those unfamiliar, is a hollow muffinesque confection of egg batter. The name seems to have something to do with the gusto with which a popover overflows its muffin tin. At $2, it’s a nicely affordable (and surprisingly filling for being hollow) inflatable comfort food.

Fast Movers at Slow Money Boston

Last night I dropped in at Greater Boston Slow Money’s sixth Entrepreneur Showcase. As the organizers say,

We will be bringing together investors, sustainable food entrepreneurs and leaders working together to rebuild our local food system. Learn about investment opportunities and how you can participate in rebuilding local economies based on the principles of soil fertility, sense of place, care of the commons and economic, cultural and biological diversity.

And deliver on that they did.  Six businesses in various states of startupness presented, each allotted five minutes and five slides to present, and five more minutes for audience Q&A.

Culticycle
OK, not the sexiest name, but this contraption, described as a “…pedal powered tractor for cultivation and seeding, built from lawn tractor, ATV, and bicycle parts” apparently does the job cheaper and not all that much slower than a diesel tractor does, and it’s better for the health of the operator and the environment, too.

Mei Mei Street Kitchen
I’ve kvelled about the Mei Mei food truck here before, but at the showcase they unveiled their plan for an immobile restaurant, and also showed how they could use this restaurant as a base of operations for the food truck business and increase its efficiency in the bargain.

Full Sun Company
Did you know that they grow sunflower seeds in Vermont? I had no idea. I also had no idea that most of the oil seed grown in this country is exported for processing and then we re-import the stuff as oil and meal and other finished products. Full Sun aims to process seeds locally and sell the oil and meal locally, reducing costs and greening the process along the way.

Fresh Truck
I briefly met the Fresh Truckers at Mass Innovation Nights Foodie Edition.  They are setting up a retrofitted school bus as a mobile farmers market to try and green some of the fresh food deserts of the Boston area.

Fresh Food Generation
Starting with some sobering information about obesity and diabetes in Boston’s neighborhoods and following up with a map of the food options nearest a community pool (three fast food chain outlets and a liquor store), FFG’s pitch for a “farm-to-plate food truck enterprise that serves healthy cooked foods in low income communities” had real impact.

CERO (Cooperative Energy, Recycling & Organics)
This team of employee owners, multicultural and multilingual, is trying to bring the trash hauling and recycling business in Boston out of its “wild west” state by shifting the economics from favoring tonnage to landfills to favoring source separation for recycling and re-use in the community.

These capsules just scratch the surface.  You can read a bit more at the event’s hashtag #SMESbos and of course from each firm’s site. What’s even more inspiring to me than each individual business plan is that these entrepreneurs are so supportive of one another and are already sharing information, mentoring one another, even working together at this early stage.

If you care about the food system in Boston and New England, these are people and companies well worth getting to know.

Cap’n Marden is a Trucking Codsend

Well, it’s not summer, it’s barely even spring, but Captain Marden’s Cod Squad truck makes the frozen wind tunnel of City Hall Plaza feel just a bit like the beach.

upload

I had the crab cake sandwich, a burger-sized crabcake on a “Hazel’s Bakery Roll” with fries and fixins for $9. You can almost smell the salt air.

upload

I’ve heard good things about their fried clams and will have to return for the fish n chips and calamari. I’ll leave the battle of the lobster rolls those those who roll that way.

The simple elements of a satisfying truck

If you know what you’re about and focus on it to the exclusion of distractions, you are setting yourself up for success. So I knew when I ordered Chicken and Rice from the Chicken and Rice Guys’ food truck that I was getting their #1 dish.

upload

Chicken, and not a stingy amount, over yellow rice, with lettuce and a couple of toasted pita wedges. BBQ, hot and white sauces were available. They were pushing the white sauce hard but had trouble explaining just what was in it. I think it’s some mixture of tahini and garlic mayo or ranch. The chicken was flavorful even without the sauces (but I enjoyed both white and BBQ), and few will feel hungry after a $6 regular.

upload

Even though the chicken and rice is clearly the star of the show, there are other options.  Well, there is one other option, lamb gyro, or you could hedge your bets with half and half. The meal comes in two sizes and there are only two other add-ons, more meat or more pita. That’s what I call a simple menu and a focused operation. Kudos.

Compliments food truck complements the local truck scene and gathers compliments from diners

The 2013 Food Truck Season is in full swing at City Hall Frozen Wind Tunnel Plaza. Yesterday I visited the new (to me) Compliments Food Truck, which is billed (or blackboarded) as “New to Boston” “Kinda Earthy Crunchy” and “Run on Veggie Fuel.”

The menu was nice and simple, just how I like them, with three sandwiches and three sides, all loaded with locally sourced ingredients. I had the Sea Ya Later tuna melt (sorry, I can’t use the cutesy names) and You’re So Fresh fried sweet onion.

image

The tuna melt was spot-on, not overstuffed, with good cheese and not too much mayo in the tuna. The bread was exceptional: hearty, crusty, very nicely grilled. If the grilled cheese sandwich is anything like this, the full-time grilled cheese trucks might need to up their games.

image

I didn’t really know what to expect from the fried onion, I was probably imagining either rings or some form of bloomin’ onion.   What I got was a helping of almost candy-sweet onions, a little oily but nicely fried balancing between crispy and mushy.

Compliments to the chef, I say.

For those of you – like me – who are continually unsure of the difference between compliment and complement, here is the estimable Grammar Girl’s quick mnemonic:

I like to give compliments.

That is to say, compliment with an “I” is the one that means saying something nice about somebody, or in the case of “with our compliments” it means giving something for free.  Complement with an “E” means something that goes well with or completes something else, and also a full set or crew.

For those of you – like me – who are frequently unsure of the difference between continual and continuous…

Continuous is constant and unceasing, like the flow of a river.

Continual is consistently repeated but may include breaks, like the flow of pedantic grammar notes from that jerk at the office.

Disclosure: I did not receive any complimentary food in the course of writing this post.