By Helaina Thompson
In May, on the fringes of the Southern heat’s advent, I flew to Texas for two days to photograph an event in downtown Austin. The day before the event, I rented a bicycle and explored the city of Austin — an increasingly hip mecca for great barbecue and, recently, food on wheels. Parked in a grassy patch 100 feet away from a quiet street, the Micklethwait Craft Meats food truck served me dinner that evening: a juicy pulled-pork sandwich, topped off with made-from-scratch pickled red onions and house barbecue sauce.
Austin dominates the food-truck scene. The Austin Visitor Center estimates nearly 2,000 mobile food vendors will roam its streets by this fall. This trend has trickled into smaller cities such as Iowa City, in which food trucks such as Local Burrito and Provender make regular street-side appearances. Following suit, earlier this month, University of Iowa Dining débuted its interpretation of mobile cuisine: the Street Hawk Food Truck.
Last week, I visited the new food truck parked on the T. Anne Cleary Walkway. While my Micklethwait experience set a strong precedent for the meal, I did enjoy my crunchy falafel wrap, complete with hummus, yogurt feta cream, and red cabbage “slaw.” The menu offered chicken tacos, fried chicken, and pulled pork as well, although the most requested entrée item appeared to be the BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger coupled with “fresh fried potato chips.”
UI Housing & Dining said it launched the Street Hawk Food Truck in an effort to reduce stress on dorm marketplace kitchens after a record number of new students showed up this year. UI Dining neglected to ask local mobile food vendors to help serve hungry freshmen, citing complications with meal-plan swipes. Yet, nearby, Iowa State allows numerous local, privately owned food trucks to park on campus over the lunch hour.
Because of low start-up investment fees, food trucks grant chefs opportunities to take healthy risks with their businesses. Kyle Sieck, the founder and chef of Local Burrito, primarily works with seasonal, fresh produce from nearby farmers to create Mexican Asian fusion dishes that satisfy vegetarians and meat eaters alike. Micklethwait ensures everything on its menu is created in house from scratch. These business decisions are made possible, in part, by the relatively small scale commitment food trucks require.
The Street Hawk Food Truck, meanwhile, offered a mere extension of mediocre, yet safe, dorm food — much of which, I predict, came out of a frozen plastic bag. In the truck’s small, stainless steel kitchen interior, food like liquids poured from large, plastic containers. And the majority of the largely meat dominated menu items appeared high in calories and low in nutrient density (one cannot be sure, though, as nutrition information is not available for the food truck at this time). I was happy to learn that the apple featured on the menu, however, arrived from Wilson’s Orchard, seven miles north of Iowa City.
The location of the Street Hawk Food Truck, situated across from the Pappajohn Business Building, felt almost ironic as I waited in the 15-minute line for my wrap. I wondered, why weren’t business students invited to design this food truck as a project in social entrepreneurship? The Street Hawk Food Truck represents one missed opportunity after another. Yes, the falafel was good. But I prefer Oasis, anyway.