truckeroo

Last Friday, I met Larry downtown so we could eat dinner procured entirely from food trucks. It was Truckeroo 5, and it was awesome!

In the past, food trucks conjured up images of vendors on city streets selling week-old hot dogs out of a tank of dirty dishwater in the back of a truck. Or the mobile canteens that pull up outside construction sites. Perhaps, the Good Humor Truck (Larry still yells "ice cream!" whenever he hears the chimes from the Ice Cream Man). In college, we had Ziggy's Wagon - a food truck that stopped outside the dorms after the bars closed, so drunk students could get their late night fix of greasy cheese fries. Turns out Ziggy was selling something else out of the back of his truck, too: Marijuana. And cocaine. (Ziggy got busted and spent three years in jail for that one.)

But the food trucks of 2011 are not the typical roach coaches of the past - they've gone gourmet these days (with price tags to match - a lobster roll from the famous DC Red Hook Lobster Truck will run you $15).

I have a bit of an obsession with these fancy food trucks. When they became the trend in California a few years ago, I was envious. And I followed along with the Food Network show The Great Food Truck Race. Within a year or two, fancy food trucks did eventually come to DC. Problem was, by that time I was working and living in the suburbs and didn't have the opportunity to grab lunch from one of these mini-restaurants on wheels.


The solution? Truckeroo! Truckeroo is a monthly gathering of 25-30 DC food trucks. They all park at Das Bullpen (a biergarten/big open lot full of picnic tables used for tailgating before baseball games) next to Nationals Park and serve up food to hungry Washingtonians all day. I'd been wanting to check it out for a while, and for the past few months have had conflicts and wasn't able to go. But last week was the last Truckeroo of the year and I'm so glad we went. It was a fun environment and everything we ate was delicious.

DC Empanadas - these things are freaking awesome!

Poutine.

So the guys at TaKorean were decidedly not Korean. (But their tacos were delicious.)

Sadly, we couldn't try food from all the trucks, but here's what I was able to stuff in my hungry maw:

     Empanadas | DC Empanadas
     Korean Tacos | TaKorean
     Poutine | Eat Wonky
     Curry | Fojol Brothers
     Cupcakes | Sweet Bites
     Cheesecake | Sweetz/That Cheesecake Truck

Don't even ask me to pick a favorite because everything we tried was fantastic.

Korean Tacos from TaKorean (Half-eaten, whoops!)

Eat Wonky - home of the poutine-covered hot dog (aka Wonky Dog).

CUPCAKES!

Cookies & Cream Cupcake from Sweet Bites. Mmmm!

I hope they continue Truckeroo next year, because I can't wait to go back and try food from all the trucks I missed. Next time, I think we'll bring a big group of friends, claim a picnic table, and make an evening of it. (There's a beer stand, too.) Who's in?