The prospect of "Food Truck Day" is always exciting and I've been waiting to catch one (when I was hungry) for quite a long time now. One of my coworkers called me up and told me that the food truck brigade was just steps from my new office and off I went to check it out.
A few months ago a building fell down and today that's where all the food trucks were; in a fenced gravel lot just steps from Ryerson's main campus on Yonge and Gould. There were quite a few options and one truck that had yet to open, but I ended up going with Blue Donkey Streatery. First of all, the truck itself is appealing. As a fan of Greek food, it screams "yummy garlicky everything" and I ended up choosing the Calamari wrap, which had fried calamari rings, fries, onion, tomato and one (or possibly two... still not sure) sauces in it.
On paper, the Calamari wrap sounds fantastic - yummy tender calamari in a warm wrap (with those yummy spices they brush them with), some feta cheese, tomato, sauce... all the makings for something incredible. In reality? Not quite so much. Generally food-truck stuff is easy to eat on the go, you can have something in one hand and not get TOO messy (obviously depending on what you choose) as you walk back to work or wherever you might be going. Calamari in a wrap is a bad idea in reality- I only say this because only about half of the calamari in the wrap I had were tender enough that one bite would cut the calamari. I sat for a while almost gnawing at one piece, which when its in a wrap, is majorly awkward (thank god my office door was closed). Next up, the toppings. Not very evenly dispersed and almost too much of whatever kind of sauce was on the wrap. Given, it was a tasty tasty sauce, but it made for a serious mess and I'm lucky I'm not covered in it right now. All the onions were at one end and the two pieces of tomato were at the top and the bottom of the wrap. But when I did get a bite of everything all in, it was pretty good. Sorry, but I'm not done talking about the calamari... on almost every single piece I had, I would bite through it (sometimes after multiple tries) and this stringy-elasticky-thing would start peeling off the outside of the calamari, effectively pulling off any of the fried coating and making my meal more unappetizing by the second. I eat calamari frequently and this doesn't often happen to this extent. As a result, I ended up having to dig out the calamari in question, peel off this stringy thing and then put the calamari back into my wrap when I was done. Not the way I want to eat my lunch.
All in, Blue Donkey really failed my meet my general food truck expectations. Perhaps they were too high but too bad. If I'm going to buy food from a truck and a wrap for $8, it had better be pretty fantastic to hold up to some of my downtown staples. I may come back and try something else but chances are I'll head to one of my other choices for greek food should the mood so strike me. read more