Mobile Food Madness!

Wow, what an experience!  Once again there has been a successful Mobile Food Rodeo and The Foodie Friends were there to soak it all up for you (and let’s be honest, for us too!).  The Mobile Food Rodeo is probably our favorite food event in Seattle.  It’s the coming together of multiple chefs and food cultures and perspectives on those foods in a very positive, non-competitive environment that really promotes the local foodie culture.  I really can’t say enough good things about it! 

The event has no entry fee and you’re free to walk around and buy from as many or as little of the different trucks as you’d like.  This is great for people who have always wanted to try out a food truck but are never on its route during the week and it gets the trucks a lot wider exposure which is always welcome.  For those that are really dedicated to food, you can pay $25 in advance for an early admission ticket that will let you into the event two hours early so that you can get your food without having to wait in lines.  As someone who didn’t do that last year but took advantage of it this year, the VIF passes (Very Important Foodie) are really a godsend if you dislike waiting in lines for 20 minutes just to order your food.  They also come with a bonus that off-sets their cost: if you have a smart phone then the VIF passes come with a $15 credit towards the LevelUp app, a program that lets you pay for your food by debit or credit card in a very easy and quick manner.  If you take full advantage of the discounts you are really only paying $10 for the early pass and the pass also gets you an Honest Tea, a bag of Pop Chips and a nicer kind of red licorice.  All in all, it’s very economical and the advantages outweigh the cost in my opinion.

Put now onto talking about the food trucks!  Unfortunately we are only two people and our stomachs and pocketbooks are not limitless, so we didn’t get to try all 45 of the food trucks at the event.  We did get to try several though, and we’ve been to others in the past so here is our breakdown of the ones we’ve tried!

Truck Reviews

Lumpia World
Filipino food, according to a prediction Andrew Zimmern made this summer it’s the food world’s next big trend.  From what we saw at the food rodeo this is really starting to be true! (You heard it here first!)  Lumpia World has a lot of traditional filipino favorites: lumpia (which is like an egg roll), chicken adobo (a slow-cooked vinegar dish), longanizas (a filipino variation on rich spanish pork sausage) and pancit (a yellow curry rice noodle dish).  Lumpia World serves a pretty traditional take on home style filipino dishes and is a great place to get filipino food without any fusion or other elements.

Crisp Creperie
Crepes are something that are made in our house fairly frequently but we never really ever go out to get crepes.  But when Luke saw that they had a strawberry-rhubarb crepe he had to have one.  This was a surprisingly good truck- they had savory as well as sweet crepes and while some of the combinations sounded a bit out there, everything we had was very well done and high quality.  I’d like more opportunities to go back and try more of their offerings.

Snout & Co.
No matter how much our Cuban friend Nick complains about a lack of authentic Cuban food in Seattle (we’re totally taking him with us to review Rumba) Snout & Co offers a great selection of Cuban and Southern stylings.  We’ve had their Cuban sandwich and their collard greens and both were fantastic, though we’re not sure how authentic the Cuban is if that is a particular concern of yours.  Mostly I just know it as a great place to get some high quality pork stuffs with some great mustard sauce to go on it, and in the end that’s all I need.

Off the Rez:
A unique style of Blackfeet* food with some Mexican influences, Off the Rez really does offer some things that you might not have seen before.  Their Indian Tacos are great and their frybread is always the perfect balance of crisp and doughy.  When you go there make sure you get some frybread with a savory addition, in my opinion it is much better than with any jellies or sweet options (though if you like sweets, the jams and such are all really good as well!)

Xplosive:
As someone who is half-filipino I enjoy asian fusion because I grew up in a household with Filipino traditions and Bavarian traditions (maybe one day I’ll make an adobo pork strudel…).  Xplosive is a truck that takes Korean, Vietnamese and Filipino food traditions and throws them together at high speeds.  The real treat here are the marinated meats they use in all of their tacos and sandwiches.  All of it, the chicken, pork, beef and tofu are all wonderfully seasoned and very distinctly flavored.  The banh mi is huge and the asian tacos really feel asian because of the seasonings but it doesn’t feel forced with the tortillas or anything.  Both of us agree that Xplosive was our favorite food truck of the show and we can’t wait until they open for regular service.

Grilled Cheese Experience:
We love a good grilled cheese.  These aren’t the squeaky cheese combinations of some vibrant orange slice of plastic, This food truck uses the top cheddar and other kinds of cheeses and is over-all very high quality.  With additives like avocado and bacon, the sandwiches can be very rich and savory, something supported well by the artisan sourdough that they use.  While $8-$12 for a grilled cheese sounds pretty steep, be assured that you’re not getting something slap-dash, these grilled cheeses are of the highest quality.

We tried a couple more of the trucks there and in a future post we will revisit some of our favorites, but for now that’s it.  If you haven’t, try checking out the Mobile Food Rodeo’s list of vendor trucks that were there.  The list has a link to each truck’s website and will help you find something close to you that might interest you!

Editor’s Note:  When we originally published this article we said that the Off the Rez truck was Navajo style food.  That was incorrect and the style is actually Blackfeet.  We changed it once we found out. Sorry!