I just got home from Edmonton's first ever food truck event, What The Truck?!, held in Beaver Hill House Park downtown. Food trucks have been a big thing in the U.S. and other parts of Canada for a while, and we've had a couple of pioneers in the downtown core, but they really only seem to be catching on within the past year.
There were a few true food trucks - Eva Sweet, Filistix, Carnival Cravings, Fat Franks, and Funky Pickle, as well as trucks from The Lingnan and The Fork and Spoon Brigade. Now, Beaver Hill park is a decent sized park, but for some reason all seven of these trucks were crammed together in a tiny circle at the 'front' of the park on Jasper Ave, leaving much available space north empty. This made for waiting in lines very crowded, as some of the lines would get long and snake together. Sometimes people weren't even sure which line they were standing in over where Eva Sweet and Filistix were. And the lines were long! I don't know the logistics of running a food truck, but you'd think they would bring an extra person in to help out in there. Case in point - when we arrived, I went right to the Filistix line. After a few minutes, we decided that my husband would go to the Carnival Cravings tent and my friend would go to Eva Sweet. It's a good thing the lines were so close together, so we could all be in separate lines and still talk to each other. By the time all was said and done and I actually got my food from Filistix (longest line/wait by far), 45 minutes had gone by! And I had already eaten my waffle and pretzel from the other trucks!
The food. I had a waffle with whipped cream and chocolate sauce ($4.50), my first ever waffle from Eva Sweet. It was good. Damn good.
Then I had a hot pretzel ($5) from Carnival Cravings, which had garlic butter, sea salt and parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. Wow, delicious. But I love garlic and sea salt, so there you go. It was probably the best thing I ate there. I also got a lemonade ($4), but it was kind of disappointing.
Lastly, I had the pulled pork filibun ($6.50) from Filistix. Maybe it was the buildup, or maybe it was that I had already eaten something salty and sweet, but by the time I got it I just wasn't feeling it. I ate half of it and had to give it to Dave. I would like to try something else from them, though.
The weirdest part of the event? You'd think that a place with seven trucks serving food and beverages would have at least one porta-potty. But no. Not-a one. Bizarre.
Good idea for an event. Hopefully it will be a little more polished and they will make better use of their space (or get a bigger space) next time. read more