John T Edge - The truck food cookbook: 150 recipes and ramblings from Americas best restaurants on wheels

John T. Edge, a five-time James Beard Award nominee, writes the monthly United Tastes for The New York Times. His work for Saveur and other magazines has been featured in seven editions of the Best Food Writing compilations. He runs the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. His last book was Algonquins Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lovers Companion to the South. Mr. Edge lives with his wife and son in Oxford, Mississippi. Visit his website at johntedge.com or follow him on Twitter (@johntedge).

150 RECIPES and RAMBLINGS from AMERICAS BEST RESTAURANTS on WHEELS

John T. Edge

Recipes and Photographs by Angie Mosier

WORKMAN PUBLISHING NEW YORK

Copyright 2012 by John T. Edge

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproducedmechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopyingwithout written permission of the publisher. Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eISBN 9780761171188

Cover lettering illustrations and art direction by Jean-Marc Troadec
Front cover and spine photos by Mike Vago
Back cover picture frames by magann/fotolia.

Additional photography by: age fotostock: Jesus Sierra .

Portions of the articles on 09 originally appeared in a different form in The New York Times, and are used with permission.

Workman books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for premiums and sales promotions as well as for fund-raising or educational use. Special editions or book excerpts can also be created to specification. For details, contact the Special Sales Director at the address below, or send an e-mail to specialmarkets@workman.com.

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We cook food that hits our customers like a bong hit.

ROY CHOI, LOS ANGELES

My sense of taste is at full strength only when Im standing up.

CALVIN TRILLIN, NEW YORK CITY

The cast of characters behind The Truck Food Cookbook was large and generous:

Angie Mosier shot the photographs, wrangled the recipes, and smiled, even in a hostage situation (see ). Judith Winfrey and Natalie Jordi helped her.

Deep thanks to Peter Workman and Bob Miller for their ink-stained vision. At Workman, Suzanne Rafer drove the truck, abetted on the editorial and design side by Jean-Marc Troadec, Lisa Hollander, Erin Klabunde, Barbara Mateer, David Schiller, and Peggy Gannon. Over in publicity, sales, and marketing, the crew of engaged and enthusiastic collaborators included Selina Meere, Page Edmunds, Walter Weinz, Jessica Wiener, Jenny Mandel and the special sales team, Marilyn Barnett and the folks in gift sales, and the digital crew headed by Andrea Fleck-Nisbit.

As usual, my agent, David Black, kicked butt.

Rob Long drove me about Los Angeles. Warren Hansen, the cart maven of Madison, Wisconsin, shared freely. Jane Thompson, Christian Krogstad, Kelly Rodgers, and Gretchen Barron unveiled Portland. Robb Walsh and Allison Cook showed me the greasy side of Houston. Mark Estes, Claudia Alarcon, and Virginia Wood shared Austin tips. With Ruth Lafler, I walked Fruitvale. Andrea Weigl drove me in Durham. Rick Nelson talked me through Minneapolis.

Brad Parsons shepherded me about Seattle. Jonathan Kauffman introduced me to taco buses. Peter McKee indulged me a cream cheese dog. Leslie Kelly and Nancy Leson drank and talked with me. Kirsten Hines kept an eye out in San Francisco. With Caleb Zigas, I strolled the Mission. Ed Levine and Zack Brooks tramped through Manhattan with me. With Gary Nabhan and Janos Wilder, I ate Sonoran hot dogs.

In addition to Angies photographs, we turned to a few other good folks, including Jessi Langsen, who shot Koos Grill, Matthew Bufford, who shot Bike Basket Pies, and Marshall Wright, who shot El Naranjo. Kate Medley captured Durham. Lou Weinert trained his lens for my author portrait. The Museum of the City of New York shared the Berenice Abbott photo on .

I wrote the great majority of this book while on a fellowship at Escape to Create, in Seaside, Florida. Malayne Demars, Marsha Dowler, Linda Cook, Lynne Nesmith, and Karen Holland were marvels. Joyce Wilson, sage of the Gulf Coast, made me feel welcome. So did Robert Davis, street food advocate and new urbanism pioneer.

Small portions of this book appeared, in decidedly different forms, in the Oxford American,Gourmet, Garden & Gun,The New York Times, and Mens Health.

In honor of the work done by the Street Vendor Project in New York City, and La Cocina in San Francisco, the author and Workman Publishing have made donations to each concern.

FOR MY WIFE, BLAIR, WHO ALWAYS WELCOMED ME HOME WITH SALADS...

STREET ECONOMICS: What It Costs

IT TAKES $900,000 to open a Chipotle Mexican Grill. A SUBWAY will set you back as much as $200,000. The startup cost for a wheeled restaurant, on the other hand, is often a fraction of whats needed to open a sit-down restaurant.

A standard-issue street food truck, purchased new, will set you back $100,000 or more. But eBay is chockablock with ads for used food trucks that can be had for $10,000 and used food carts that can be had for $2,000. (Back in 2002, along with a friend, I bought a hot dogshaped cart for $3,000, but thats a long story, one you can read about on .)

Then theres the matter of permits. New York City, for example, allots just three thousand or so food vendor licenses each year. As you might expect, theyre traded by way of a robust black market, fetching anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000. A city like Austin is more hospitable to vendors; there approximately one thousand licensed vendors pay $200 or so for their permits.

I was in Saigon, Vietnam, in 2007, eating curbside bnh xo and bun cha, when I read that the Supreme Court of India had decided to ban street sellers from cooking dishes on the sidewalks of New Delhi. The move was understood to be part of an effort to sweep clean Indias capital in advance of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

That decision was met with derision. Such a change would be unmanageable. Such an edict would be unenforceable in a city where, by some estimates, 100,000 food vendors work the city streets, selling paneers and kachoris and samosas. Street food, as citizens of New Delhi had known it for generations, was to be transformed. City officials planned a licensing system for hawkers. They spoke of food courts of the sort found in Singapore and other Southeast Asian cities. They revealed that under the new system curbside vendors would begin paying taxes.