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

The post Food History: The History of Food Trucks appeared first on EcoSalon.

We’d rather live near a taco truck, than a Taco Bell. Sure. And summer wouldn’t feel the same without the occasional Mr. Softee/Frosty Treats/ or Tactical Ice Cream Unit soft serve indulgence.

But at some point this whole thing gets a little ridiculous. First there’s all those disposable plates and utensils – though some trucks use only compostable ware, provide receptacles and recycle their frying oil into biofuel.

Then there’s the fact that street food is supposed to be affordable, simple, and accessible. But with the cool factor off the charts, people sometimes wait hours for a small portion of very expensive food that they then have to scarf down while perched precariously on a urine soaked curb. Is it that good, really?

Then there are all these trucks driving around and sometimes idling in parking places all day and spewing out noxious fumes along with the emissions caused by their refrigeration systems, stoves, fryers, and grills.

In New York, the city council just moved forward on its first anti-food truck law due to idling and parking issues.

Not to mention complaints from non-mobile restaurants.

Though some trucks are greener than others, there is a real lack of discussion overall about the environmental impact of the explosion in food trucks. This how-to article doesn’t mention it at all.

Thankfully, there are food trucks heading in the right direction. Here’s our list of 10 mobile vendors and one futuristic pop up restaurant that are curbing the use of excess resources.

1. Kickstand Coffee in Brooklyn NY uses bikes to transport its coffee and even uses bike power to fuel a portion of the brewing. If they don’t use disposable cups or plastic lids, they’d get extra points in my book, but their website doesn’t mention it. Hey Brooklynites! Are they totally green or not?

2. The Green Pirate Truck Juice Truck in Brooklyn NY runs its truck on biodiesel, composts all organic waste and works with farmers to get it to farms in upstate NY. They also use compostable cups.

3. Green Trucks in the LA area power their trucks on vegetable oil and biodiesel, make their food in a solar powered kitchen, use green packaging (though they don’t say what kind), and have a lot of organic vegetarian choices. They still serve meat of the slightly more humane variety, though it’s not grass-fed from family farms and “sustainably farmed” shrimp. To me these look like compromises to stay in business and keep their price points reasonable, which is understandable.

4. Liba’s Falafel Truck in San Francisco and Emeryville, CA serves a totally organic, vegetarian (mostly vegan) menu, recycles its frying oil into fuel, and uses all compostable packaging while providing the necessary receptacles to customers.

5. On the Fly in DC vends organic, local foods from their specially designed, American made zero-emission plug-in”smartkarts®“. They also use eco-friendly packaging, though they don’t say what kind.

6. Austin’s Soup Peddler has been around since before the current mobile food trend grew wheels. Soup Peddler started out delivering soups by bike in his Austin neighborhood. The business has grown to include entrees, and other foods and, while some deliveries are still done by bike, customers have the option to pick up as well. Hopefully at least some of them are on two wheels.

7. Steubens Food Truck in Denver is still in development but founders say its solar-powered, biofueled, locally grown goodness is coming soon!

8. DC’s Sweetflow Yogurt is a truck designed to run without a generator so it uses less fuel. They also use local and organic ingredients and 100 percent compostable packaging.

9. Fresh Local in New Hampshire is run by actual farmers. The products are all sourced from local family farms, the disposables are biodegradable and they feed any kitchen scraps they don’t compost to their very own chickens.

10.  Clover Food Lab runs trucks in Boston and at MIT. Founders are nuts about compost and are working toward a zero waste operation. The trucks are run on biodiesel, and the food is local and organic. Their blog, which documents the process of getting the business up and running, provides a fascinating window into what it takes to start a green food truck.

The whole scene in Portland is greener from an emissions point of view because many of the carts are stationary and in pods concentrated in downtown areas easily accessible by bikers and walkers.

And here’s the future of the pop-up restaurant – somewhere between a stand-alone business and a restaurant on wheels, the solar powered, foldable, moveable Muv Box may be the biggest future trend yet.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: ricardodiaz11

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