One Month at a Time: Food Trucks for Fun | Life & Arts

This was a single-serving size plate of nachos, which had followed a basket of chips and salsa.

There was nothing wholesome about the nachitas.

It was good ol’ fashioned garbage food, a dietary disaster in the making with a name that sounded suspiciously like something the brain trust at Taco Bell tossed around before deciding to go in a different direction.

Dubious name or not, the nachitas were wonderful and at eight bucks, it reminded me of something you’d get at a food truck, which was why I was in Eleanor, in the first place.

Only, I wasn’t at Eleanor Park. Instead, I was seated at a booth inside Mi Casita Mexican Restaurant, stuffing chips in my mouth, listening to a Spanish language cover of a Frank Sinatra song and wishing I’d asked for the beer menu.

After a month of hauling a weighted backpack around Charleston, I’d decided I wanted to explore food trucks.

The announcement about the West Virginia Food Truck Festival in Eleanor influenced that. At least, it got me thinking about food trucks, which have been an important part of my lifelong journey as an eater.

Because of food trucks I had my first spring roll, my first falafel sandwich and my first fried Oreo.

Food trucks introduced me to gyros, loaded tater tots, Cornish pasties and inexplicably, alcohol-free beer.

That last one was at the State Fair of West Virginia a couple dozen years ago and it was barely a real food truck. There was a truck. The name of the beer was splashed all over it and I expect they kept the samples inside, but workers handed out small cups of the non-alcoholic brew at a table in front of it.

I gave the beer a sip but couldn’t make myself swallow.

One of my favorite local food trucks was the Coffee Camper. I stopped by whenever I saw them in Kanawha City. One summer, they sold me, I believe, a gingerbread latte during their “Christmas in July” promotion.

With warm weather (mostly) returning, I’ve thought about grabbing food at a truck and eating outside. There are also a few trucks I’ve wanted to try, but always keep missing, like Bite Mi, an Asian street food truck and Truckin’ Cheesy in Huntington, whose menu suggests that they’ve elevated garbage food to an artform.

What I like about food trucks is the novelty.

The best food trucks aren’t about sensible food. I’ve never ordered a salad at a food truck. You can’t put that on a stick, though I suppose you can deep fry anything.

Food trucks promise variety and while I’m sure you can get a good burger or a hotdog at a food truck, I can get those at half a dozen places within walking distance of my office in Charleston.

I don’t order a hot dog from a food truck unless it’s stuffed with cheese, wrapped in bacon, beer batter dipped and deep fried. I don’t get a hamburger unless it’s made from freshly ground (never frozen) muppet.

With food trucks, you want ribbon fries, deep fried ice cream and stir-fried chicken soaked in sauce that served over fried rice hot enough to burn the inside of your mouth. You want messy, street tacos and barbecue sandwiches you shouldn’t eat unless you’re wearing all black.

My interest is more than just trying to see how many weird lunches I can convince the business offices to pay for. I’m interested in how food trucks just work.

I have some food experience. Through high school and college, I washed dishes and dropped French fries at steak houses and then made sandwiches and hand tossed pizzas in a low-ceiling kitchen with a fan.

My last (paying) food service gig was as a barista at Books-a-Million, just before I took my job with the newspaper.

It was a good job. My coworkers were friendly and routinely gave me lifts home because I couldn’t keep a car running longer than a month. I liked our customers, the tips weren’t terrible, and got to drink all the coffee I wanted.

Through One Month at a Time, I’ve infrequently had the chance to dip my toe back into the service world. I scooped ice cream for a few weeks at Ellen’s Ice Cream in Charleston, last year. I dipped strawberries in chocolate at Sarah’s Bakery to help fund a Valentine’s Day project and rolled sushi at Ichiban (though no customers ever ate anything I touched).

Working a food truck seemed like new territory for me.

To kick off the month, I drove out to Putnam County for the West Virginia Food Truck Festival at Eleanor Park. The whole thing sounded great –about 15 food truck choices, plenty of open space to sit and eat while live music played on a stage somewhere.

Admission was free and the weather looked promising –nothing but sunshine.

By the time I got to the park Saturday afternoon, I knew I’d been overly optimistic. The festival attracted a fantastic crowd, but there weren’t nearly enough trucks. Lines were long and slow moving, particularly in front of trucks with lots of menu options.

Standing among hundreds of people it suddenly occurred to me that the trucks themselves weren’t all that big. The kitchens were tiny and could only be staffed by a couple of people.

Everyone was swamped –except for the Kona Ice truck and Frios Gourmet Pops from Barboursville.

So, I bought a delicious Key Lime popsicle from Frios, decided I’d seen the festival and went in search of a local restaurant.

Mi Casita Mexican Restaurant was the first place I came to, about a mile from the fairgrounds.

Early afternoon on a Saturday, there were only a few occupied tables. Some, like me, were refugees from the Food Truck Fest. I recognized them from the parking lot.

Lunch was pretty good. The chips were warm and the toppings on the nachita were filling.

As I was paying for lunch, I struck up a conversation with the manager, Mario, who told me the food truck festival had sent him some business, which he appreciated.

He said he’d been invited to bring his food truck, Truckin’ Cheesy, to the festival, but turned it down.

“Staffing is no problem,” he said. “But the hours are all wrong. You need to set something up like that at 8:30, not at noon.”

He said he didn’t see the festival experience as being a good one. The numbers didn’t add up –and he didn’t want to have to pay a $600 fee just to serve food.

“It’s a yearly fee you pay to the county,” he explained.

Mario told me that was a lot of money for a food truck business that only planned to set up for one day or just a couple of days inside of a year. Food trucks move around a lot. His truck went to festivals all over the region.

It wasn’t just Putnam County, he said, other West Virginia counties had similar fees, which he said was a hindrance for some places to get much variety.

I could look into that, he said, if I was interested.

“I had no idea,” I told him.