Even a Food Lover Needs Food on the Go Sometimes

There are people who eat to live and then there are those of us who live to experience food. We delight in sampling new things and detest wasting calories on the on mundane tasteless convenience and fast foods that many American’s diets have been reduced to. But even a food connoisseur needs food in a hurry sometimes. That is why I love one of the current urban food trends – food trucks. Apparently I am not the only one who thinks this is a hot food trend. Mintel (a leading food and drink marketing research company) highlighted food trucks this month in its Menu Trends email.

A food truck is basically a mini restaurant stuffed in the back of a truck. You can think of it as the marriage of an urban restaurant concept and an old fashion food cart. The menus may be limited, but the menu items have interesting twists making them the perfect fast food option for a food lover like myself.

In addition to putting an emphasis on interesting food choices, food trucks put a lot on emphasis on being mobile. They regularly move around the cities requiring potential customers to visit a truck’s website or follow it on twitter for the day’s location. It can make finding your lunch a lot like a game of Where’s Waldo!

Did I mention food trucks are definitely an urban trend? Since I live in a very non-urban area, I can only experience food trucks when I travel, so on my recent trip to Los Angeles I seized the opportunity and went looking for food trucks.

I found several but one particularly memorable one was the Shrimp Pimp truck. Like most food trucks the Shrimp Pimp has a narrowly focused menu. I tried the Drunken Shrimp Tacos for lunch. They consisted of sherry ginger marinated shrimp popped on top of jicima, a green pepper slice, mandarin orange and fresh cilantro and all wrapped up with a corn tortilla. A totally tasty lunch time treat.

Next month I am headed to New York City where I hope to explore a whole new genera of food trucks - maybe Kogi BBQ or Rickshaw Dumplings or Waffles and Dinges - with so many choices it is heard to know where to start!