Foodie Fever: Keep on Truckin’!

This past weekend, we met up with my sister at the Gourmet Food Truck Festival held at the Del Mar Racetrack (the traditional site of the San Diego County Fair).  I’ve been seeing these types of events on television as well as all over the city.  I missed out on a smaller version a couple of months ago, so I when we reset our plans to see the “Cars 2 Experience” to next week, we knew exactly where we wanted to go.

Gone are the days of “the roach coach”.  There were 45 trucks at this event filled with edible mobile goodness at every turn.  Although my family only hit up two trucks, my sister, her friends and family share with each other by buying food from several different trucks, slicing up smaller portions so that everyone can have a sample, which reminded me of tapas.  We got to sample food from at least five other trucks this way (although I can’t recall which ones).

Part of the fun of this type of food festival are the trucks themselves.  Each truck had something savory to sell, and something fanciful for the eyes.  It was fun to walk around just to see all of the keenly decorated trucks with clever names.  Because of all of the incredibly long lines, we only went to two trucks:  Brats Berlin and Buttermilk Truck.

At the Brats Berlin truck, I tried the traditional bratwurst with sauerkraut and grilled onions while Deon tried the chicken jalapeno and onion sausage with spicy and sweet peppers.  Both were incredibly good, bursting with flavor and spice.

With a name like Buttermilk Truck, I knew I had to stop in to at least check out the menu.  For only $5, I was able to get the red velvet chocolate chip pancake bites and the housemade cake donuts.  We added just a touch of syrup to the pancakes because we weren’t sure how sweet it would already be, but it only made it taste even better.  Both dishes were moist and just sweet enough so they weren’t overbearing.  The butter was lightly whipped and almost tasted like ice cream.  There was enough to share with another person, so my sister and I devoured the whole thing.  That clearly was my favorite food truck of the day.  Apparently Andrew Zimmern has eaten there as a part of his “Appetite for Life” feature on MSN, a show all about America’s street cuisine.

I’m so very glad that we rearranged our weekend to make room for this festival because it is definitely something that we will be attending again.  This time, we will make sure to get out there early to avoid all of the long lines and hit up more trucks.  Hope you all had a great weekend!

Dominic and Mei-Lin had a blast at the Gourmet Food Truck Festival!