5:42 AM Wednesday, December 7, 2011

It was cold (I mean come on....this is Tucson!) but that didn't keep us or a couple hundred other people away.

It was great to see that space packed full of trucks and people and fuzzy hats. We fasted all day so that we could overdo last night.

The Patty Wagon's burgers were tasty and the size was just right for sampling. Little Elvis was a hit. A guy sitting at our table chirped out that the banana made it; I agree!

Mrs. Fork and Knife got her hands on a couple of Korean tacos from MaFooCo. Yum.

Beer and wine, “...makes standing in line much more bearable.” (p.s. Borderlands Brewery's grand opening on Saturday...yes, we'll be there.)

Cyclopsicle cleaned our palettes with a lovely cantaloupe & mint Popsicle. Despite the cool weather, I saw quite a few people with frozen treats in their hands.

A spinach and feta tart from Dragoon Cafe (record for shortest wait for food...I think it took 30 seconds!) was warming my hand while Mrs. F&K got a piece of chocolate cake from Street Delights.

My coat buttons are starting to pull...

Finally, for dessert, we had a plate of Cuban pulled pork from Jamie's Bitchen Kitchen. Warm and tasty.

There wasn't a stinker in the bunch. If I had brought my other stomach, I would have eaten even more.

Lucky for us (and Tucson), I can head out to the street anytime and keep on sampling!

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6:22 PM Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Between wading through the requirements for the necessary permits to set up and serve, working on recipes, getting funds together and generally upending our daily lives to get this name on the marquee, we have been running.

Oh yeah, plus Thanksgiving.

I’m thankful that Tucson has shown up to the food truck party!

While we put together our own recipes and ideas, we continue to be inspired by Jamie's Bitchen Kitchen, Cyclopsicle, Planet of the Crepes, MaFooCo and the ever-growing talent pool in town.

Hell yeah we went to the 1st Food Truck Roundup! 
It was fantastic!
Interested in talking with/getting advice from some of the ‘seasoned’ veterans, we showed up right after work. We watched a bit of a buzz build up on-line but we didn’t know if that would translate to people actually going.

It was pretty low key when we got there (5-ish). Assuming that bugging people while they were finishing up prep would be, at best, annoying and, at worse, rude, we decided to take a stroll around town via Meet Me at Maynards (another regular good time in beautiful Downtown Tucson).

[As an aside: I am so sick of people telling me that there’s “...nothing going on Downtown.” I used to smile and start listing the places to go and things to do, but lately I have been starting to glare before I smile and start listing the places to go…..]

When we made our way back to Dinnerware Artspace, we were amazed to see the place was packed. Serpentine lines of happy eager eaters wove around the parking lot. The truck windows were mobbed!

We had planned on trying a few things from different trucks (skipped my lunch!), but that looked questionable. I queued up for a kimchi quesadillas from MaFooCo (I asked, and it was repeatedly asked of me, “Is this the line for [insert destination here]? I figure, get in a line…any line and think while you wait!). Mrs. Fork and Knife took a look around.

When she got back, we made the decision to consult a couple of drinks. So, we hit the bar and then quickly got in line for Jamie’s BK. I was happy to have a beer in my hand but I'll be even happier when that beer is a fresh pint of Borderlands brew! (The other week, I had a couple for breakfast at Congress…a hearty morning drink that stood up nicely to my Creole plate.)



So now, pint (well...plastic cup) in hand and friendly people all around us, we made our way to (one of the last) Cuban sandwiches in the place.

Yum.

Food trucks.
Food carts.
Food bicycles.
Art.
Music.
Beer.
Happy people.
Downtown.
Tucson.
And to think…there’s another one heading our way!

I cannot wait to set up our truck in the middle (or the outskirts…I’m not picky) of this party and see it through a tiny window with a grill right behind me.

That's us in the FAR back...black and tan...

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10:07 PM Friday, October 21, 2011

p.s. the Power-Out Chaurice came across gang busters...cased and loose. I love it when the extra ingredient is fate....

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12:30 PM Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Well, we weren't there as much as we wanted to be, but whilst there we ate well.

It was nice to see the different truck setups. There were a few questions that we had answered (Isabella's Ice Cream solved the ‘breaking back’ problem with that nifty cut out floor) and a few more that popped up.
What a marathon! 11 hours is a long time to serve – I suppose helpers going back and forth to the commissary would be VERY useful.

Anyway – we are back to the ‘usual’ routine of refining recipes (Mrs. Fork and Knife is knee deep in a cheese book – heaven!) and weeding through the red tape.
Now, back to that soppressata…..

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12:53 PM Tuesday, October 4, 2011

We had a few friends in town this busy weekend.
The Crawl was going on and they really wanted to go. So, we girded up and headed out on the town.

There were a ton of taco trucks and carts up and down 4th. A friend hit a few and did a bit of a 2AM taste test. The results, as you can imagine, were mixed.

We did see the Rolling Chef outside of The Hut and he seemed to have a steady group outside. I hope that he did well.
On a side note, what happened to Tiki Tim’s?

We were able to try a few recipes out on our unsuspecting friends. We included some homemade garlic sausage in a breakfast dish that we are working on and they seemed to dig it. We were also able to slip in a tester of gingered carrot hot sauce that went over well. I love this no-name-yet hot sauce (the bright orange pop on the plate, the vinegary pop in my mouth).

Sunday night, we were lucky enough to get a bit of rain. We (always seem to) need it and I am not complaining.
Unfortunately, we lost power for a couple of hours. No big deal, except we were right in the middle of making sausage the new-fashioned way: with electricity.

Everything went into the fridge as fast as possible (room temperature is certainly a meat grinding no-no!). I had our fridge so packed with pots and mixing bowls, wine and Nimbus Pale Ale, meat and chopped veg mixes (not to mention the syrups and sauce and pickles that we have been working on) that it could have been considered sausage itself. I was afraid that either the shelves were going to collapse or one odd nudge would send the whole kit spilling onto our floor. I cannot wait to get our commissary set up and buy a couple of proper reach-ins!

I was so thrown off that I screwed up the spice mixture, which of course I didn’t realize until I was testing it. A bit of doctoring and….well see. I’m cooking a few links up tomorrow for dinner, so, if it comes out with a good flavor we can call it TEP inspiration.

My friend Chaurice.

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7:11 AM Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Another beautiful night. A little bit of lightning in the south and a light breeze.

We sat outside and tested a chicken recipe. It was really just the base of the recipes.
No matter how good the sauce or rub or (insert food technique here), if the core of the dish is hurried and thoughtless it just wont work out.
I'm sure you know this already.

We waded into the sea of red tape yesterday.
Paperwork and permits and codes to learn and live by.
This part seems overwhelming. Talk about being in the weeds.
I suppose that we will take it like everything else: one ticket at a time.

That's okay. We'll be pros by the end of it with an arsenal of paperwork at our command.

Plus it will give us more time to do a little 'research'.
Anywhere worth eating for the Club Crawl?

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10:03 AM Sunday, September 25, 2011

 

It took five years for the novelty of regularly scheduled weekends to wear off.


For 18 years we have been dancing across the country, funded primarily by restaurant work. The East Coast, West Coast, Desert and Swamps have all been kind enough to find us a place at the table.
Dishwasher, prep cook, line cook (cold then hot then lead then sous), busser, waiter (then fancier restaurants as a server then everywhere as a server), bartender and bar manager all rolled around the real job which is Restaurant Worker.

Now, Tucson, our favorite place.

Restaurants helped us land here a few years ago. After we settled, we decided to get the hell out of them. The hours, the standing, the running, the burns, the slick floors, the falls, the cuts, the pay were traded for office jobs with banker's hours, cooking at home and serving our friends.
The Hosts.

Every job that I have had that wasn't in The Business seemed so slow. My office coworkers, as great as they are, seem to move and react so much slower than chef's and cooks.
Of course, that can be a good thing. My office manager has yet to throw a saucepan of soup across the board room.

Even as I type this, I am smiling about it. We have a thousand stories that start or end with a restaurant. The Office has yet to ripen with outrageous tales.

Despite the fact that food trucks are a bit trendy now in parts of the country, we have decided that it is exactly what we have been missing. How else are we going to get these recipes out there?

We are just putting our mise en place together and that is what this is about.
It's too early for us to scream out our names, we are still working at those offices and we have to keep doing that while we finish up the recipes and write out the business plan and eventually go begging for money.

We'll chronicle the moves here.
We'll be eating our weight in street food. If you have a truck that we can get to, we'll be there.
We'll be grilling here at the house, working on sauces and sides, mains and desserts, meats and breads.
We'll be connecting with local farms and ranches and figuring out how to get you the best food available.
We'll be throwing ourselves at the Tucson food community.

We're getting ready to butter you up.



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