food cart madness - part ii - ragazzi pizza co.

Ragazzi Pizza Co.

Location: Northeast corner of Burrard, at Pender

As I savoured my pulled pork sandwich from Re-Up, I was already getting myself ready for the next stop on my little food truck madness tour. Ragazzi Pizza specializes in thin-crust pizza with a rotating variety of daily flavours. For the full menu, check out Ragazzi's site.

food cart madness - part i - re-up

I have an inherent fascination with food trucks. After a visit to the University of Pennsylvania campus back in 1998 and bearing witness to a parking lot filled with gimongous white trucks preparing and selling every cuisine under the sun, I was hooked.

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!

kelowna

On an Okanagan wine tour with the parents, and trying to fit in as much eats as possible. I've only been out here twice in the past, and they really didn't count (I was too young, and the second trip was a daytrip for more official purposes) so not only am I going out with the parents, but I'm going to take an extra day to hang around the area to see and do more.

Sadly I've been more disappointed with the meals than impressed, but I'll start hitting up farms tomorrow so there's definite promise there.

Details to follow of course.

a rant

A note to all Asian-wannabe chefs.

Stop trying to recreate "authentic" Asian food. You will not win. You will by default whether you like it or not invite the comparisons between what you want $10 for and what you can get for $2 in Chinatown.

And you will lose.

It's as simple as that.

Why? Because the grandma/grandpa cooking in Chinatown with MSG, 40 years of practice and just pure skill is always going to be better than what your wannabe culinary school/FoodTV education/organic-hormone-free vision can churn out.

You know what will win? If you actually take some initiative and creativity (and it doesn't take much) and create SOMETHING NEW with those same ingredients. Then you know what? You'll have something people CAN'T get for $2 in Chinatown - then at least you'll have a chance.

It's telling that some of the most creative modern Asian food I've had is from food trucks. There guys are playing with flavours and managing to create magic (or at times, not) for under $4 a pop. I don't know what their food costs are, and I don't care. All I care about is getting f*cking tasty food at a decent value.

I don't care that you make your own tofu, or find and kill your own pig somewhere in Upstate New York, or stew your own hoison sauce. If it doesn't taste as good as that stuff I get from the cooler section at T&T (or 99 Ranch for the Americans) - then I'm very literally not buying.

Or maybe... just maybe... cook the same thing and actually make it genuinely TASTE better than what grandma is doing. But good luck with that. Maenam's the only place that can do it right, and that's because Angus has the skills of a Thai grandma with a classical French culinary education to back it up.

And no, this doesn't mean you start stealing recipes from David Chang or Jean-Georges.

Rant - done.