Foodie News
Houston's caught mobile food fever: Food truck park and regular food truck foodcourt considered
When it comes to food trucks, is the hunt part of the fun? Whether you follow your favorite trucks around via Twitter or just try them out as you find them, there may soon be a better way to get into the food truck scene.
According to the Chronicle's Nancy Sarnoff, the city may be considering adding food truck parks to create mobile food destinations. One plan has been offered by Washington Wave shuttle owner Lauren Barrish, who wants to include a rotating crew of food trucks in her parking lot on Washington Avenue.
"It would be a mini-transit center that happens to have a totally cool food-truck park," she told Sarnoff. "You come here, grab food while you're waiting for friends and then hop on the bus."
An informal food truck park already forms every Wednesday around the City Hall Farmers Market (among other places), but more official gathering spots would put Houston in line with food-truck-friendly cities. As InnerLooped notes:
While this may sound foreign to Houstonians, it certainly is not around the country. Recently, my parents returned from a trip to Portland. One of the things that stuck out in their minds about the city was the immense food truck park in their Downtown area. They loved it, and it has become sort of a tourist attraction in and of itself."
Without an official food truck park, people are still trying to organize the mobile businesses, with varying degrees of success. The Haute Wheels food truck festival in May was an unmitigated disaster, and while H-Town Food Crawl and its Food Truck Fridays seemed to have a good system set up to avoid the same mistakes, the monthly event has recently come under criticism from food truck owners, as reported by Eater.
But that hasn't stopped others from trying to plan mobile-eatery-oriented events. On Friday, Noel Furniture featured seven popular food trucks — Eatsie Boys, Oh My Gogi, Mmm Cupcake and more — in a lunchtime parking lot Food Truck Food Court that could become a regular feature if it proves popular.
If the food truck craze a fad or the way of the future? And would you frequent a food truck park?