|
|
|
On Wheels
Claudette Campbell and Iman Marcano-Sowell, who run Calypso at the Chestnut Hill Farmers Market, rolled out The Mini Trini, a Caribbean restaurant on wheels, at LOVE Park yesterday. The mother/daughter team are slinging classic Trini fare — veggie, shrimp and chicken roti; chicken and fish doubles; accra (fried codfish cakes); bake and saltfish — plus traditional Caribbean Mauby and Sorrel drinks. They'll vend every Monday and Thursday from 11 to 3 at LOVE Park and on Sundays at the Headhouse Farmers Market. Keep tabs on them via Twitter: @TheMiniTrini
Yesterday Critical Mass filled you in on the last-minute venue change for the highly anticipated POPPED! Music Festival — due to heavy precipitation in the forecast, the two-day show has been moved from outdoors at FDR Park to the Liacouras Center at Temple University. (Official details here.) This seemed to jeopardize the all-local Food Bazaar Meal Ticket has been telling you about (we helped curate participants), since there's simply no adequate place to fit all those trucks and vendors along that swath of North Broad, to say nothing of the permitting morass.
View galleryIn early August we dropped word on Pitruco Pizza, a mobile Neapolitan wood-burning oven operation setting its sights on West Philly. Partner Nathan Winkler-Rhoades sends along word that the truck is progressing quite nicely — the exterior's been wrapped and branded (above), and they're settling on an opening menu, which you can peep after the jump (click to enlarge;prices subject to change). The plan is for Pitruco to sneak-peek on Saturday, Oct. 1 during Fall Fest at LOVE Park, where they will vend on Mondays and Wednesdays (other days they'll post up at 3500 Market). On Sunday, Oct. 2, you'll have a second chance to catch Pitruco's pies at a late-afternoon food fundraiser at Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis Center. They'll also participate in The Food Trust's Oct. 6 Chinatown Night Market in Chinatown before formally launching for business on Monday, Oct. 10.
Renaissance Sausage natural-casing ninja Dan Semko sold his food truck in July (it was purchased by Lucky Old Souls), but he's not wasting much time getting back on the street — Semko tells Meal Ticket he's working on launching a cart that will specialize in the breakfast sandwiches that garnered him such a positive following at the Headhouse farmers market and other city perches. Semko, who will set up at Broad and Cherry in the new Lenfest Plaza, will serve handmade pork breakfast patties or veggie sausage topped with organic eggs and local cheese on fresh-baked kaiser rolls. He'll also deviate from his previous approach by offering fresh Lancaster bacon, lunch specials, a variety of baked goods and coffee roasted locally by Cafe L'Aube. No debut date for the Renaissance breakfast cart just yet but keep an eye on @thesausagetruck for updates.
Pure Fare (119 S. 21st St.), the health-conscious concept launched by siblings Kunal and Kristi Sehgal in April 2011, is ready to expand with a second location — this one rolling. (See our June review.) Kunal tells Meal Ticket he and his sister landed a truck about a month ago, and plan on launching it as a Monday-to-Friday operation at the corner of 40th and Locust. "It will be a nice extension of our physical store," says Kunal of the operation, which will vend all the ready-to-go sandwiches and salads available at their 21st Street café, plus snacks, drinks and Blue Bottle coffee. (All prep and cooking will be done in the restaurant.) Look for Pure Fare on four wheels to debut in roughly two weeks.
Photo: Drew Lazor
Got a little more info on Matthew "Feldie" Feldman's plans to launch a mobile burger-and-fry truck ahead of his in-the-works Newbold jazz venue Lucky Old Souls. (The deal was first mentioned on Critical Mass.)
Feldman tells Meal Ticket he first got the idea to launch a food truck about four months back, but decided it wasn't the right time — but that was before Renaissance Sausage announced they were unloading their wheels. He checked out the vehicle and put down a deposit on it the same day.
Feldman's collaborating on this aspect of the LOS brand with his wife, Quavin Johnson Feldman. She designed the new LOS logo (right) and was integral in recipe development, especially the veggie burger, which will be offered along with patties made with beef from Rineer Family Farm in Pequea. The truck will feature a sweet sound system, too; peep Icepack for more on what Feldman will be playing.
No launch date has been set for the truck just yet. Feldman adds that his bar/restaurant/venue (1713 McKean St.), which also has no opening set in stone, will feature a more extensive menu than the truck, but it'll also focus on "comfort food made with fresh ingredients from small, local farms."
Former El Camino Real chef and Top Chef contestant Jennifer Zavala has been laying low here in Philly as of late, but she's got a new project working that she hopes to launch in 2012 — Cherry Bomb, an old mini school bus-turned-ice cream truck she's converting into her own mobile operation. "I guess it's all come around for me, since I started my career cooking on a tour bus," says Zavala, who fed Ozzfest acts prior to landing in Philly. What type of food? "Stoner food — it has no boundaries!" Zavala jokes. Mainly, she uses the moniker "because 'continental' sounds so snooty." She's quick to point out that there will be no cheesesteaks. Look for Cherry Bomb to launch next spring.
Coming to Philly by late October is Soup & Wich, a local/organic-focused food truck serving, as you might've already gathered, soup and sandwiches. Owner Elissa Farina has chef Alex Garfinkel, a vet of Le Bec-Fin, Morimoto and Amada, among other spots, developing a menu that'll feature options like slow-cooked pork, build-your-own grilled cheese and banh mi, plus a selection of soups that'll include pho, ramen, carrot ginger, Thai curry and classic chicken noodle. Soup & Wich is striving for transparency among its offerings, as well, and plans on posting both calorie counts and figures indicating just how local and organic each dish truly is. Home base for the truck is still up in the air, but the team is looking for space around Temple, University City and Center City while they work through the L&I process with the city.
Pitruco is the name of the mobile pizza operation friends and Philly natives Nathan Winkler-Rhoades, Jonah Fligelman and Eric Hilkowitz hope to roll out onto our streets by late September.
Hilkowitz, who currently works for The Food Trust, says they're aiming for sidewalk space at 35th and Market and potentially at LOVE Park for their business, a pickup truck-led pizza trailer outfitted with a fully functional wood-fired oven (picture it taking up the righthand portion of the framework above). Winkler-Rhoades, who's currently working on a PhD at Harvard, is the pizza guy; he's earned some press up in Mass for building backyard pizza ovens out of clay.
For a better idea of Pitruco's style, browse the photos from a recent test bake — Winkler-Rhoades floats proposed varieties like the standard Neapolitan marinara and margherita, plus pies with sausage (Fiorella's, mushroom, caramelized onion, pecorino bechamel), roasted eggplant (hot and sweet peppers, ricotta) and braised radicchio (garlic, mozz, parm, mushrooms, balsamic).
Photos: Courtesy of Sarah Madden/Pitruco
The very thematic Always Sunny Grilled Cheese Co., run by San Fran transplant Barry Greenidge, debuted last weekend in NoLibs' Garden Variety space at Second and Poplar. Open tonight and tomorrow from 9 p.m. to 3 p.m., the cart will be serving sandwiches like the Green Man (aged cheddar, mozzarella, sautéed greens with garlic, red pepper and lemon zest on rye), the Sweet Dee (aged cheddar, honey, dijon on Texas toast) and the Mac (aged cheddar, American, maple candied bacon, tomato and spicy mayo on rye).
In case you want fries with that: Garden Variety co-proprietor Mike "Frosty" Spiker adds that he's working on a Belgian frites operation that work out of the same cart as Always Sunny. They'll be serving fries real proper-like in paper cones, with homemade dipping sauces (peanut, spicy mayo, etc.).
- barstool scientist
- Booze
- Brew Revue
- Chef Salad
- Closings
- Coffee
- Contests
- Dealage
- Dirty Dishes
- Don't Front
- Eat This Immediately
- Field Trip
- Food and Art
- Food and Holidays
- Food and Movies
- Food and Music
- Food and Politics
- Food and Sports
- Food and Web
- Food Blogs
- Food Books
- Food Events
- Food News
- Food TV
- Gifted
- Happy Hour Hopper
- How-To
- In Print
- Interview
- Meal Ticket
- Menu Time
- Not So Quickfire
- Notes from the Weekend
- On Wheels
- Openings
- Patio Drinking
- Philly Beer Week 2010
- Photos
- Private Chef POV
- Product Placement
- Recipes
- Snack Time
- Stiff Drank
- SUPPER
- Tea
- Testing
- Ticket Stubs
- Top Chef
- Vegan
- Vegetarian
- Video
- Weekly Candy
- Weird Regional Foods
- We're Here to Help
- Where'd We Eat?
- Drew Lazor's Ill-Advised Rant Factory
- Pregame
- Ill-Advised Ranting
- The Week Without Meat
- Philly Beer Week 2009
- Real Big
- Where'd I Eat Last Night?
- Top Chef Masters
- The Good Word
- Next Iron Chef
- Arterial Terrorism
- Food and Radio
