Where do our favorite dishes come from? In our ongoing series ‘Food History’ we take a look at classic dishes and their roots, this time we step away from a specific dish and look at our all-time favorite food trend: the history of food trucks. 

Creme brulee carts and tacos sold in Airstreams. Nothing has become more synonymous with modern American food culture than mobile food trucks. There are entire festivals devoted to them, reality shows, and many a restaurant has launched a mobile version to supplement their brick and mortar locations. You might think food trucks are a catchy trend fueled by hashtags and the underground food movement (one that even the corporate world loves), but mobile food delivery is certainly nothing new.

Push carts date back to the infant days of the United States; New Amsterdam, now known as New York City, began regulating mobile food vendors in the late 1600s. But as many an American food-related custom does, the modern day food truck finds its roots in the heart of Texas. It was here in 1866 that ranger Charles Goodnight solved the problem of cooking well while out on cattle drives: he outfitted a United States Army wagon with kitchen accoutrements and began dishing out ample servings of fresh meat and coffee. A cowboy’s culinary dream. The chuckwagon – which you could call America’s original food truck – was born.

Beyond its push carts, today’s foodie metropolis New York City was an early comer to the food truck game as well with its Night Lunch wagons. In 1893, in an attempt to better feed the working class, the Church Temperance Society invested in a wagon that served meals from 7:30pm to 4am, giving workers a food option beyond the local saloon.

Much like today, the wagons were a budget friendly restaurateur option: the cost of outfitting a lunch wagon and opening it up for business was around $600. Today Henry Ford’s infamous 1890 Night Owl Lunch wagon is still in service, and believed to be the last remaining horse-drawn lunch wagon of its kind.

The United States Army started feeding its troops with mobile canteens in the early 1900s, and in 1936 Oscar Meyer rolled out its first portable hot dog truck, The Weiner Mobile. About the same time, Good Humor hit the streets with its first truck selling “ice cream on a stick.”

In a culture that quickly grew to love drive-thrus and fast food, it’s no surprise that mobile food took off in the way that it did. Even waffle carts were a thing before Portlandia was ever born, as witnessed in New Orleans in the 1940s.

Lunch carts and ice cream trucks soon became a standard occurrence–you know exactly what that chime on infinite repeat means when you hear it out your window–and in 1974 Raul Martínez founded King Taco, repurposing an ice cream van to start selling mobile lunch food, purportedly the first taco truck in the nation. Nowadays you’ll find food truck offerings everywhere from Anchorage to Austin in everything from Airstreams to Smart Cars.

It’s a business that isn’t always easy, but combine a slow economy with the appeal of buying creative fast food and there’s no doubt that food trucks are here to stay.

Check out more of our Food History series.

Image: Robert Neff, The Henry Ford, Louisiana Division/City Archives, New Orleans Public Library

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A round-up of what we’re reading right now. 

We might be able to grow tropical fruits in urban northern climates after all. And make it look good. Say hello to bananas in Paris. [Via GOOD]

You can accomplish a lot simply by being more optimistic. [Via Inc.]

Summer camp isn’t all kayaking and making lanyards. From culinary arts to military training, check out these interesting camps around the world. [Via TakePart]

Another reason to take time to unplug: exposure to dim light (i.e. your computer and television) at night may lead to depression. [Via CNN]

Ever thought about launching a food truck? First you will need a name. Don’t worry, there’s a generator for that. [Via McSweeney’s]

Americans wash their hair almost twice as much as Europeans in a week. How much is too much? [Via Organic Authority]

Choose your reading list carefully, because your bookshelf can say a lot to a potential partner. [Via How About We]

Image: twicepix

The post Link Love: Urban Bananas, Why You Should Be More Optimistic, and How Unplugging Can Save You From Depression appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhat fuels our desire to combine food and business.

It was only a matter of time before a small-town Airstream food truck opportunity that involved tacos crossed my path. No, really.

Over a sunny, Saturday morning coffee in Salida, Colorado this weekend, the conversation was going a little something like this:

“We need someone to get the Airstream taco truck going. We already have the Airstream and the space. You ladies in?” Annie, a go-getter, mountain biking bad ass asked us hopefully, in the kind of voice that you know someone is trying to insist on something really hard.

My friend Megan and I looked at each other. We both have jobs, and love our urban friends and living spaces, but I could see the wheels turning in her head thinking about all it would take to make this a possibility. How often are you propositioned with opening a food venture in a small town that several of your friends live in? Not every day.

Let me back up a little.

Food is a constant theme between a close group of friends of mine. New Years was devoted to the overconsumption of tacos in Baja, Mexico, the following winter months sharing recipes and the warmer spring days catching up over outdoor weekend brunches.

We’re spread out, two of us in Portland and others in Colorado. The geographic distance between us has lead to plenty of emails, group texts (often with food photos) and Skype chats, the former being exactly how I first found out about the Airstream.

“I have an idea to run by you,” my friend Beda kicked off one weekend call.

“Yes…” I responded, knowing fully well that anytime Beda has an idea it’s going to be a good one.

“So we’re thinking of starting a taco truck in Salida, because there’s no good place to get a burrito! And it would be in an Airstream,” she continued.

At this point we launched into the logistics of running a food establishment – logistics that neither of us have any experience in – and whether or not it was possible.

“And then you could move down here and run it!” she said.

I laughed and we left things at that.

Flash forward to five months later when myself and my fellow Portland foodie urbanite – yes, we eat sea salt with everything – Megan were drinking coffee with the Salida crew that we had come to visit.

“So, that food truck… we need someone to run it. We already have the wine tasting room and the distillery on board, and the space is right next to the new bike shop. You could serve locally roasted coffee, and breakfast burritos to all the skiers in the winter. You ladies want to move down here and take on the project?” Annie was all over this.

Wine, bikes and tacos? My heart skipped a beat.

These are all things that have become ubiquitous with urban food hot spots, you can barely walk five blocks in Portland, San Francisco or Brooklyn without coming across an off-the-cuff food operation, be it a food truck, a waffle window or a refurbished storage container that sells local food. But rural Colorado where there’s a good mix of mountain bikers, cowboys, river guides and four wheel truck drivers, is something different. On the other hand, isn’t this where free range local beef and real artisan goat cheese is just down the road? Good food abounds even if it’s not drizzled in truffle oil (although if you’re ever in Salida, be sure to try the truffle oil fries at The Fritz).

Can’t you envision an Airstream parked here serving up homemade tacos and burritos?

What is it about a food venture that is so appealing?

“You should open a restaurant!” is a common phrase heard at dinner parties when someone cooks a delicious meal, and who hasn’t had romantic visions of starting a brewery where you can serve local food and craft beer? Grab coffee at a quaint cafe with art on the walls and local bands playing at night while you’re on vacation and you’ll soon find yourself thinking, “we should have something like that here,” as soon as you return home.

Food is primal, and providing our communities with a chance to enjoy it is appealing. Seductive even.

There is of course the reality, and at the back of my mind I always hear my mother saying, “you don’t want to run a restaurant, you need balance.” Mothers like to give that kind of advice, especially if they know you well. There is no denying that a job in the food industry is a stressful and time consuming one. But it’s also rewarding.

Making food is making sustenance, and turning it into an art in the process. It’s about providing people with a place to eat, but also a place to appreciate good food and the community around them, all things that even those of us sitting around drinking coffee and discussing the potential business venture, without any restaurant or food truck management experience under our belts, are passionate about.

I am by no means trying to over-romanticize the everyday logistics that go into such a project, or even say that I would be willing to commit to it.

Run a restaurant and you need to put food on the table. Every. Single. Day. Or at least every single day you commit to being open. You also have to do fun jobs like inventory, permitting and clean-up. But at the end of the day, you’re still running a business that’s all about food. Shouldn’t everything we do in life be a labor of love? And what requires more love than good food?

We may not all launch a restaurant, but plenty of people out there are passionate about what they eat and drink and pursuing successful business ventures, from baking to support nonprofits, to hosting local farm-to-table tours, to roasting specialty coffee and delivering it on a bike. There is a reward in giving back to a community that you can’t put a dollar value to, and what better way to do so than through food and drink?

It might be a stretch to say “change the world one food truck at a time” but if in doing so we are creating a better conversation around food, what’s to say that this isn’t the tipping point? We all need to eat, and if we can have affordable and equitable access to a healthy product, the faster we can influence a path to positive change in the realm of food politics.

Airstream taco truck in Salida, Colorado? Who knows. But the seed has been planted, and at the very least, it’s fun to dream.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Anna Brones

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ColumnThe film “Truck Farm” proves that small scale urban farming efforts are part of the solution.

I’ve seen Truck Farm pop up around the web over the last year, in fact I remember when it was up for a NAU’s 2nd annual Grant for Change. But beyond some cool looking photos of a garden in the back of an old, black, Dodge truck – the kind of photos that make their way onto green and design blogs and give you a general feeling of goodness – I didn’t really have a grasp of what Truck Farm was. Until last week.

Packed into an auditorium with hundreds of other people at Mountainfilm in Telluride, I didn’t know what to expect. Can you really make a 48 minute film about growing a garden in the bed of a truck?

After a presentation on food the day before by the film’s directors, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, I knew that it would be smart and funny and most likely touch on some of the things in which I believe strongly. What transpired was one of the best films I have seen in awhile. Sewn into the story of a Brooklynite transforming the bed of his truck into a garden are glimpses into how we start changing our food policy, from the ground up.

Watch the trailer for Truck Farm here.

Truck Farm is quirky and humorous, yet it hits on the themes that we so often discuss when it comes to food: thinking about where our food comes from, the importance of reconnecting to what we eat, building community and being part of an underground movement that feels empowered to make change.

Along the way, the acclaimed Marion Nestle takes a bite of the Truck Farm‘s salad and smiles, gourmet chefs pay for truck grown herbs, even if the bounty is small, teens at a community garden donate a pepper plant to be put in the bed, and after taking the truck on a school tour, children are inspired to start building gardens in whatever objects they can find.

But Truck Farm itself is only the beginning.

There’s a point in the film when one of the chefs interviewed points out that he loves the concept, but he’s still not sure if it’s part of the global solution to food issues.

But what if it is the solution?

Since the success of the Brooklyn Truck Farm, individuals around the country have started their own versions. Even strolling through Telluride I saw one parked downtown, and in Denver you can buy Truck Farm produce at the farmers market. The number of urban farms and their capacity have increased exponentially. We may not be solving the problems of the global food supply with these efforts, but they’re certainly heartening.

Efforts like these prove that there is a group of people out there that are truly concerned with where their food comes from and honoring the connection to what they eat. Above that, they’re willing to think creatively about what it’s going to take to encourage entire communities to move in that direction.

Cheney and Ellis remind us that the demand is there; that in urban spaces, restaurants want locally grown goods, be it from a rooftop farm or the back of a truck. And if the demand is there, we need to start thinking about increasing the supply, from window gardens to planters of herbs.

With two food related films under their belts (Cheney and Ellis are also the brains behind King Corn), the duo knows the importance of educating and empowering food leaders. Enter their FoodCorps national service program, an initiative with visionary “volunteers for a yearlong term of public service in school food systems,” a place that we know desperately needs help. Run as an AmeriCorps program, in its first year Food Corps has placed leaders in ten states to start seriously working on building gardens, connecting kids to farmers and more.

As Ellis says, when it comes to changing the food movement, “gardens are such a powerful place to start.” Makes you want to go build a garden in your truck doesn’t it?

If we all take the steps to grow some of our own food, even if it’s a small amount, then we become part of the solution, and the more of us that do it, the bigger our movement becomes. And maybe then, we can start talking about this as being part of a global solution. After all, couldn’t we all use a little more “think globally, act locally”?

Images: The Tasty Buzz, Truck Farm

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