Fast forward 12 years later, and Vancouver finally jumps onto the (fairly literal) bandwagon and opens up a food truck program. Now with all fairness, City Hall had just recovered from the Olympics so to jump onto a program like this was fairly foolhardy and I will give them all the props in the world for making it happen one way or another. That being said, if you want some details on how they completely dropped the ball, give Andrew Morrison of Scout Magazine's take on the situation a read.
Long story short, over 2 months AFTER the program started when we had 1 food truck (Roaming Dragon) show up, (due to them purchasing someone else's license and location) we finally had a few out there hawking their wares. Not quite the 17 vendors expected, but we'll take what we can get.
I decided it was time to check a few of them out:
Re-Up
Location: Vancouver Art Gallery on Hornby side
Specializing in pulled pork sandwiches, Re-Up has become downtown's most popular food cart thus far, experiencing long line-ups everyday. A lot has to do with their sweet prime location, but also because the sandwich is absolutely fantastic!
Most pulled pork tends to be dry and stringy, expectant of BBQ sauce to produce the bulk of the umami. Re-Up's sandwick features very tender, moist shards of pork; a squirt of BBQ sauce; topped with crunchy coleslaw and all stuffed into a Calabria Bakery bun. The contents were perfectly balanced so this wasn't a messy meal by any means - there was a lot of meat, but everything stayed within the confines of the bun as I traversed my way through downtown foot-traffic.
My personal favourite method for making pulled pork is braising. As much as I love the flavour that smoking imparts, pork shoulder is usually too lean for a long dry cooking method so I leave it to brisket. Braising lets you have essentially leave the meat alone for hours on end, tons of flavour from spices and the liquid mixing with the meat = happiness. Check out this video from Rouxbe if you're not sure what I'm talking about.
But I digress
Re-Up also offered several home-made drinks, and I tried out their sweet iced tea, which was very nice. Wasn't cloyingly sweet, and had enough black tea flavour coming through to nicely counterpoint the pulled pork. Other drinks on offer were a peach soda, and watermelon soda.
I do want to specifically mention 1 incident that sticks out in my mind. The gentleman ahead of me ordered the peach soda, and as they were making it, they realized that they didn't have enough peach to fill his cup. Most places would simply overcompensate with more ice and soda, but no - Re-Up stopped filling his cup at 3/4, and gave him $1 back. You don't even see quality control like that in most restaurants, let alone a street vendor! So in that 1 action alone, they have a true fan in me.
Re-Up uses Gastown's The Irish Heather's kitchen overnight to cook their pork and they rewarm it for service in a bain-marie. Altogether, a very well-thought out and organized group of folks who I believe have the best food of any of the food trucks thus far. Check them out early, and often!
Check back tomorrow for the next in the series, Ragazzi Pizza.
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