There are few things we love more than a bunch of awesome food trucks congregating downtown in an area with abundant parking, seating, and that is BYOB (not to be enjoyed by the same who are driving, obvi- be safe peeps).

Tonight, that’s happening and we’re going! Want to join? Here’s the deets!

When: Thursday 8/29 5:30pm - 8:30pm

Where: The Garage 116 N Aberdeen St. Chicago, Il 60607

Who? (Note: Almost all of these guys have cooking licenses! Except Chicago Cupcakes & Gladwell, because, well, they make cupcakes and frozen treats).

The Salsa Truck
The Fat Shallot
Husky Hog BBQ
Jerk 312
Beaver’s Coffee & Donuts
Chicago Cupcakes
The Gladwell Company (frozen treats)

Bonus Detail: Charity Involvement

The organizer, Salsa Truck owner Dan Salls says: “We will all be working in support of the Greater Chicago Food Depository to help fight hunger in our great city. To learn more, visit: https://www.chicagosfoodbank.org/”

Come out and enjoy!

Got plans tonight (after you’ve heeded the words of Mayor Emanuel and considered today your Ferris Buehler’s Day off, hopefully sans a sidekick in a Red Wings jersey)? Head over to the Merchandise Mart to catch some food truck festivities!
What: Second Annual Techweek Food Truck Face Off

As if you needed another reason to attend, look at this uber talented and studly lineup of judges. (Not sure which, if any of them are single, but….*cue Single Ladies*)

When: Friday, June 28, 6 PM – 9 PM
Where: South Drive of the Merchandise Mart overlooking the Chicago River
Who: Techies, Foodies and Food Truck Chefs - judges even include former Mr. Meatyball himself, Phil Foss
Admission is free and open to the public! Trucks will be offering $2, so bring plenty o’ singles.

Published food truck lineup:

We would like to sign off this blog post with the closing line from the e-mail from the TechWeeks peeps…quite possibly our favorite e-mail signoff of all times: “Experience
first-hand the food truck phenomenon…nom…nom…nom…”

Weixler and Eisenberg at the truck

Today a movie revolving around a single food truck launches. It’s not a documentary, it’s more like Juno meets Groundhogs Day. Dry humor, all things hipster, and the same thing happening over and over with a slight variant each time. It appeared in the 2012 Tribeca Film festival (among many others), and is now coming to us!

The basis of the storyline is a girl (played by Jess Weixler) works on a food truck for a day, largely because her hangover weakened her will to protest a friend’s plea to fill in for her. So, she’s stuck in a metal box under the strong California sun serving a single sample of ice cream to each person who comes up to the truck. She’s romanced throughout the movie by Jesse Eisenberg (of The Social Network) in a slightly Napoleon-and-Deb type fashion, with all the awkwardness plus a sprinkle of aggression. We don’t want to tell you too much about the movie itself, but we do think people who like food trucks might enjoy it, so we want to give you some additional deets we got from Weixler and director Jay Gammill (below).

Weixler said the heat in the truck was made even more fierce by all the lights for filming and can definitely sympathize with food truck owners who are in trucks in hot weather day in and day out. However, despite feeling claustrophic in the small space, she said it came with a certain sense of power as well. “You have people something want,” she said, adding that the vantage point added to the feeling of power.

That fleeting ascendancy was reflected back to her by comedian and Chicagoan Matt Walsh, whose moment of improv ranked as one of our favorite lines in the movie; he said, “You food truck people think you’re so cool. You’re not! I can get ice cream from the store.” Gammill said this unscripted moment is exemplary of Walsh’s fine improv chops. Upon further investigation *coughfivesecondsonimdbcough* we found out that Walsh co-founded the Upright Citizens Brigage with Amy Poehler and a couple others, and he was also in big movies like Ted and The Hangover.

So, if they could open their own food trucks, what kind would they be? Without missing a beat, Gammill said “tacos.” (We’ll try not to read into that too much, but we’re guessing that might be an indication that he either loves all things classic. Or isn’t a foodie. We sometimes forget that not all people google “new food trucks” for fun.) Weixler at first said sushi, then took that back wondering how that would be logistically possible to maintain food freshness, then replaced that response with “fried food” or a thai/mexican fusion truck (we would so go to that truck).

Our take on the movie? Weixler is dynamic and fun to watch, the food truck freaks (and freaky laypeople) are interesting enough you wonder who will come next, and you get thrown a less funny/more serious curveball now and then. it’s not a mind-bender but it’s quirky and enjoyable and BOY do we love a movie that has a food truck on screen more often than not.

If you are now so intrigued that you want to make the leap and see the movie, it is on iTunes today! Nope, it won’t be in theaters in Chicago. So just go on iTunes. Or Amazon Instant.

About 2 years ago I started this blog because I was living in a corporate “food desert” of sorts. There were 2 quick lunch options around and, for a person who tends not to bring their lunch, that got old quick. Now, I work in an area where there are quite a few options but yet they all seem pretty homogenous. They’re chains. On Monday May 7 a restaurant is opening that I already crave: Saucy Porka. And, it just so happens that it has deep food truck roots.

Amy Le, who started Duck N Roll, is opening this breakfast-lunch joint in the heart of the financial district. I invited a hungry, food-loving friend and we ordered way too many items on the menu for our stomachs to bear (our eyes thought it was a phenomenal idea). In fact, the menu was a wonderful oasis in an area desolate of fresh ingredients and tastiness yet laden with a gajillion fast food chains (side note: a nearby chain is owned by one of the corporations who testified to continue to exile food trucks from the city center *coughwowbaocough*).

The concept is a Latin-Asian fusion restaurant. There are menu items familiar to food truck x
freaks who have tried Le’s fare, layered with the delish dishes from the talented Chef Rafael Lopez, who once worked for the Wagyu Wagon food truck. While there are Latin-Asian fusion restaurants in Chicago, the best way we can distinguish this one is that it feels honest yet inventive.

Here’s what the two of us ordered (don’t judge):

• Chorizo Egg Roll Chihuahua cheese, sweet potato, red cabbage, onion avocado aioli: Not gonna lie, can’t pass up an egg roll. This could have easily gone super greasy, with the chorizo and fried-ness and such, but it wasn’t. This was the dish that was gone just as quickly as it was set on our table.
  
• Umami Nachos topped with your choice of pork, chicken or meatless with scallions, pineapple, tomatoes, and queso fresco cheese: We didn’t get meat on ours, and neither of us are fans of pineapple nor tomato. I know, why the heck did we order it? It still sounded great, and Le’s mango salsa is a long-time fave, and this did not dissapoint. The chips were substantial enough to hold the hefty toppings, but they tasted light enough that we still had room for the entrees. We did note though that there wasn’t a stand-out ingredient of the dish, we missed a power player like something spicy or salty. Bacon? Jalapeño? We had solid Pipens and Rodmans, but longed for a Jordan.
• Curry Sweet Potato Fries served with queso fresco cheese. My +1 ordered this. If there are 2 things I don’t like it’s sweet potatoes and curry, so I had little interest in this. After one bite, I reconsidered it all. Of all our apps, this was the one that was so craveable and perfect, I wouldn’t change a thing.
• Asian Style Paella served with Chinese Lap Chang pork sausage, chorizo, edamame, scallions, and cilantro. The sausage wasn’t the crumbled Mexican-stlye chorizo I expected; it was sliced sausage-style chorizo (not true Spanish style either, it was less greasy and more subtle). The pork was the mouth-watering protein in this dish, doled out in mouth-water chunks atop a bed of beautifully seasoned rice with its trusty spicy sausage sidekick playing a complimentary Robin to its Batman.
• Domo Arigato miso braised beef short ribs served on French baguette topped with a pickled Asian slaw: My friend got this and, as a baco virgin, didn’t know what to expect. She recognized the dough from baos, but seemed to appreciate the presence of the slaw that balanced out the heftiness of the meat and masa (what do you call bao dough/bread?)
• Cupcakes Our food truck-loving conscience told us we couldn’t leave without trying the two cupcakes Flirty Cupcakes food truck made especially for Saucy Porka. Yes, you can get food truck fare at this brick-and-mortar! We even heard other food truck owners lent their support to help prepare for the night; that’s the kind of love food truck owners have for one another hear (eat that, NYC). One was a Mexican Chocolate cupcake and the other was a Ginger Lemon cupcake. We thought it was pretty cool that the two had collaborated to create desserts that weren’t just there to have a sweet to finish the meal, but they were thoughful and meaningful collaborations. I was hoping for a more potent ginger presence in the Ginger Lemon cupcake, but l liked that the frosting was so thick it legit cut like butter. For those of you who have read this blog for a hot minute, you know I don’t have a sweet tooth; I’ll defer to you all to rate these cup-sized cakes.

If you are downtown in the near future between the hours of 8am-4pm, let your behind over to Saucy Porka. They open Monday May 7, so let’s support Amy! We’ll be back opening day to wrap both a figurative and literal hug around Ms. Le, and hope to see you there too! Also, though our eyes were roughly 12x the size of our stomaches, there is a significant portion of the menu we have yet to eat through, so tell everyone what you think in the comments below!

Saucy Porka

400 S. Financial Pl (Cross St: Wells, a couple doors down from Dunkin’)
Open Monday - Friday 8am-4pm

https://www.saucyporka.com