Food trucks, glorious food trucks

So there's this show on the Food Network that always makes me hungry. Its called Eat St. and essentially, they go around the U.S. and Canada visiting amazing food trucks and profiling their delicacies - everything from Mexican to gourmet chicken wings to vegetarian cuisine, all at a street corner near you.

The food on there always looks so gourmet, so fresh, so different from the ordinary (these 'food truck chefs' seem to always come up with their own sauces, their unique spin on dishes and like to use fresh ingredients.)

All this to say that, aside from ice cream/fry trucks, I don't think I'd ever seen one of the new generation of food trucks - until I moved to Hamilton.

Our first interaction with Hamilton's burgeoning food truck scene was last summer at the Festival of Friends in Ancaster. The newest and most popular kid on the block, Gorilla Cheese, was there (the name of this truck is fantastic). Hubby, of course, had to partake (sadly, I don't eat cheese so I probably won't ever get to taste the delicacy that is Gorilla Cheese, unless they can throw together some lactose-free variety!) Needless to say, he agreed with all of the praise other people had heaped on Gorilla's version of these classic sandwiches.

We then started to notice more and more 'food trucks' around Hamilton - such a noticeable change from Toronto, where I don't think I had even seen one (apart from the aforementioned fry/hotdog/ice cream vans). In Hamilton, we even noticed bakery food trucks parked outside of the mall - I mean, who doesn't want a cupcake when they're shopping on a Saturday morning?!

I know its not exclusively a Hamilton thing, but this city does seem to have more than its share of these delicacies on wheels (as evidenced by the Sew Hungry event that pops up every so often on Ottawa Street - we keep missing out on this one, but apparently, we didn't have to wait for this event to experience a whole crew of food trucks in one spot!)

Essentially, hubby found out via Twitter last week that several food trucks were gathering in a certain spot on the mountain and we got in the car and headed out there. Yes, recently, we went to our first gathering of food trucks and had dinner. A good number of trucks showed up to the event, including one serving Schnitzel, another offering Greek food, a couple of BBQ/Southern trucks and of course, Gorilla Cheese.

We opted to try out one of the newer food trucks - Dirty South. I chose the chicken tacos, while hubby had a pulled pork sandwich - they do have an awesome looking chicken sandwich made with WAFFLES - but neither of us felt we could handle it that day! Anyway, the food was great, the place was packed and it was great to see so many Hamiltonians gathering to try out the tasty local food truck fare for dinner. Other than the cupcake truck (which is so yum!) Dirty South might be my new fave restaurant on wheels.

A few days later, we ran into more food trucks at the Dundas Cactus Festival (which I'll talk about in another post), but if you have a fave local food truck, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!