Food Trucks by Heather Shouse

Author:Heather Shouse [Shouse, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-60774-065-0
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Published: 2011-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

Austin, Texas

East Side King

Lulu B’s

Gourdough’s

Odd Duck

Flip Happy Crêpes

The Best Wurst

Marfa, Texas

Food Shark

New Orleans, Louisiana

The Que Crawl

Durham, North Carolina

Only Burger

Miami, Florida

GastroPod

Yellow Submarine

Austin, Texas

If you’ve trademarked your city as the Live Music Capital of the World, you better have plenty of booze and the grub to soak it up. Austin has both. With nearly two hundred live music venues funneling what the city estimates as close to $700 million in revenue, the local music industry is massive. Downtown clubs have been booming since the 1970s (in 1973 my dad’s band Headstone played the South Door, which he recalls as “the hip place to be”), prompting food vendors to set up on the sidewalks to offer cheap, quick eats to the partying masses.

These days, annual events like the Austin City Limits Music Festival draw close to sixty-five thousand people daily, all of them hungry and thirsty. Again the solution is simple: a kebab cart, a taco truck, a cupcake trailer … fast enough and affordable enough that their patrons can return their focus to the band onstage and the beer in hand. There’s enough demand for street eats that, as of 2010, more than a thousand mobile food vendors were licensed in Travis County. Many are tiny one-man carts, either pushed to a preferred sidewalk spot or towed by hitch. A few years ago, though, hordes of newcomers hit the scene. The funky gleaming trailers, all retrofitted to deliver delicious food while maintaining that iconic Americana look of mid-century leisure, demonstrate the city’s unofficial motto, “Keep Austin Weird.” In true individualistic spirit, many find a spot under a shady tree, set up a few picnic tables, and hang out until people find them. Others band together in groups of three or more to take over a parking lot as a hybrid between trailer park and food court. And still others stick to dancing with the one that brought ’Em, hitting the streets after dark and positioning their mobile kitchens right along the blurred sight line of those music lovers that keep this city afloat.

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