Saturday, February 8, 2014

Street Eats

I've heard so much about food trucks and the diversity of the foods they serve that, when I heard there was a Food Truck Festival in Scottsdale I literally dragged Arch there. It was a beautiful day and he would rather be playing golf!
When we arrived, after a very long walk through a dusty parking area, we got in a huge line-up to pay $12 per person to get in:

Then we had to get in line buy tokens to use to purchase food from the food trucks. Not a good start. However we soldiered on. Most of the trucks had very long line-ups to buy food.
Except the one above. Guess catfish is not an Arizona favourite. In the south east there would be a huge line up here as well.

I have no idea what this truck featured the line-up was so long we could not get close enough to read the menu:
Thes BBQ truck was very popular:
In the US BBQ means the meat is smoked, then slathered with a special sauce and then grilled. The haziness in the photo above was from the smoke created by the wood grill the edge of which you can see on the right.

Other than that I noticed that the trucks with the simplest foods had the longest line-ups:
Pre-made Sweets
Picnic Treats
Hot Dogs and Sausages
Quesadillas
But the truck with the longest line-up of all was the Maine Lobster Lady:
We could not get close to it so I checked out her menu on line when we got home. Very extensive. Especially for a truck that is located in Phoenix - I wonder where the lobster comes from.  I think her main feature is lobster rolls.

Lobster rolls are a specialty of mine and I would have liked to try them but I am guessing the line up was at least an hour long.

Not our most successful festival so instead of sharing a recipe from one of the food trucks here's my lobster roll recipe:
 
Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter
2 garlic cloves, crushed
6 soft-sided hot dog buns (the kind you have to pull apart)
1 lb lobster meat chopped
2 tbsp mayonnaise
¼ cup diced celery
salt and pepper
1 cup (about) shredded iceburg lettuce

Directions:
Melt the butter and add the garlic cloves. Let sit for a while so the garlic flavours the butter.
Brush the garlic butter on both sides of the hot dog buns and grill them on both sides. You could also brown them in a heavy frying pan on the stove top.
In a bowl mix the lobster meat, mayonnaise, celery and salt andpepper to taste. Open your grilled bun and line the bottom with iceberg lettuce than spoon the lobster mixture onto the center of the hot dog bun and serve.

Makes 6 servings

To enlarge the pictures simply left click on them
You can follow more of our adventures on our facebook page
To contact me click here 
We enjoy and appreciate your comments. To comment simply click on the comments link below.


6 comments:

  1. Sounds like a good idea except for the lines. I don't know why everybody has to have the same idea...haha!! Lobster rolls are delicious, especially with very little to cover the lobster. You're recipe sounds great!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think they were ready for the number of people who attended the festival. The venue was too crowded and the lines incredibly long. Not sure if the lines were due to inefficiency on the part of the food trucks or the number of people at the festival.

      Delete
  2. I have only had truck food at shipyards, I am sure this must be better:)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't know. Food is my "thing" and this festival was so crowded we did not get to try much. We ended up giving our token to a family coming in as we were leaving.

      Delete
  3. A food truck festival sounds like fun. Hopefully next year it will be better organized.
    Small waiting lines is important at a festival. Thanks for sharing this festival :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Janet. Welcome to our blog. You are right the festival had a lot of potential and it certainly drew a big crowd. A bigger space and faster service would make it a lot better.

      Delete

Hi There. Thanks for visiting. I enjoy and appreciate your comments.