Meals on Wheels

A convoy of trucks and carts is moving the city’s dining scene in a new direction.

The scent of grilled onions and sugary apples permeates through the open air, filling nostrils and making stomachs growl. In a plaza outside downtown’s Sweet Auburn Curb Market, men and women rush around metal trucks and push carts handcrafting gourmet eats as hungry crowds line up to put in their orders. This is the Urban Picnic—and the cooks and consumers are all part of a revolution: the burgeoning Atlanta street food scene.

Across the country, many large cities have had a thriving street food culture for years, even decades, but the city of Atlanta’s strict vending ordinances (along with the belief that it’s a non-walkable city) have kept one from ever cropping up. According to Georgia’s Food Service Rules and Regulations, food is not allowed to be cooked out of a non-permitted kitchen. Therefore, carts are limited in what they can sell (think pretzels and popcorn) because they can’t prepare any raw food.

But a band of intrepid gastronomes is working to change the laws, starting with having a presence at privately owned parking lots, festivals and markets like Sweet Auburn Curb Market. (Festival operators can give mobile food units permits; the mobile unit operator must present a health plan to the county health department before being cleared to participate.)

In the beating sun at the Urban Picnic, which takes place the last Friday of the month through October, 26-year-old Hayley Richardson, owner of a food cart called Artichoke Bliss, is unloading the last few ciabattas with prosciutto, fontina and rosemary aioli wrapped in wax paper she’s made for the day. “I had lived in New York and LA and thought, ‘What can we do to get a street life going here?’”

The movement found its legs in October 2009 with a presentation at Octane Coffee Bar on street cart culture by local food critic and writer Christiane Lauterbach.

The lecture was attended by Richardson and a grab bag of city planners, students, architects and chefs. Inspired to organize, a number of attendees formed the Atlanta Street Food Coalition, which currently has 25 members (and growing) and is working with Fulton County Environmental Health Services to bring more street food to Atlanta. So far, the department has offered to provide classes on safe kitchen standards and how to run a clean operation. According to Greg Smith, president of the ASFC, representatives from the FCEHS were rumored to have attended a recent Urban Picnic and Mayor Kasim Reed is said to be a supporter. This troupe of food truck and cart supporters is now recognized by the state of Georgia as a nonprofit corporation and is making headway against the city’s draconian regulations that say a kitchen can’t exist inside a moving vehicle.

Before there even was a street food scene or an ASFC, Kenneth Woodfin parked his Orleagian Snowballs’ mobile green kiosk at 1570 Monroe Drive, moving a year later to its current strip of land at 1161 Ponce de Leon Avenue. He’s been there for two years, thanks to permission from the land’s private owner. Woodfin creates New Orleans-style snowballs (a shaved ice ball served in a cup with sugary syrups drizzled on top) made “for the pleasure of Georgians”—hence the amalgamation. His success is proof that these carts can become a beloved part of city life. “Street vending is a big deal in other places because the real estate is so expensive,” Woodfin says. “Atlanta isn’t quite there yet, but in a decade or so street vending will dominate here.”

Woodfin’s flourishing business has inspired others to join the convoy. Jessamine Starr, who owns the bright-red Good Food Truck with her husband George Long, always has two things on the menu: “poodles” and “cones.” The poodle is an inventive spin on an all beef hot dog, served in a sweet French toast bun and topped with apple maple slaw; diners are encouraged to squeeze syrup and brown mustard on top. The savory cones change daily and can be anything from a parmesan waffle cone filled with lentils and rice topped with lemon basil ricotta to a sesame-ginger Thai cone with panang curry and rice.

Steven Carse, aka King of Pops, parks his cart at the corner of North and North Highland avenues and peddles—you guessed it—popsicles. “I saw paletas while I was traveling through Central America and decided to recreate them with an emphasis on local, fresh ingredients,” he says. Blackberry-mojito, chocolate sea salt and pineapple-ginger are always bestsellers.

Brick-and-mortar restaurants are also getting in on the uprising. Buckhead’s Souper Jenny bought a truck on eBay, painted it with peace signs and dubbed it “The Incredible Flying Soup Mobile.” During warm months, it sells cold soups like gazpacho and sandwiches like fresh Nantucket lobster rolls on thyme-and-black-pepper buns. And Westside’s Hankook Taqueria, known for its cheap Korean barbecue tacos, has dubbed its truck “Yumbii” and sells overstuffed burritos, barbecue pork sliders and other savory goodies. The pork is slow cooked for seven hours, pulled, marinated in a spicy sauce and topped with cucumber kimchee on lightly toasted buns.

Back at the Urban Picnic, the spicy scent of barbecue tacos mingles with roasted artichokes and fresh made batter—it’s the smell of street food culture heating up in the city. The asphalt is teeming with the bon vivants who are making strides in overcoming Atlanta’s outdated regulations. And based on their success thus far, one can only imagine what will happen when they wheel onto the streets in full force.

OUTSIDE IN

FOR EPICURES WHO WANT STREET FOOD WITH TABLE SERVICE, HERE ARE TWO SPOTS THAT TAKE THE SCENE INDOORS.

INC STREET FOOD At this Latin American restaurant in downtown Roswell, sweet potato tamales, adobo-braised chicken tacos, fried cactus and yucca fries are all served street-style on metal platters or in wax paper. Chef Richard Wilt crafted his menu after spending years traveling Latin America and the Caribbean. Inside, a visage of a street cart is built over the open-air kitchen, so it looks like you’re being served out of a truck. 948 Canton St, Roswell; 770-998-3114; www.incstreetfood.com

TUK TUK Named after a two-wheeled Thai taxi, Tuk Tuk offers dishes that are as authentic as any you’d find on the side streets of Bangkok. Plates include moo yang, a grilled BBQ pork skewer, and mieng kum, an old-fashioned dish of spinach leaf wrap with lime, ginger, onions, peanuts and coconut. 1745 Peachtree Rd; 678-539-6181; www.tuktukatl.com

Trucks that Tweet

Find the moveable feasts by following them on Twitter.

ARTICHOKE BLISS@artichokebliss • GOOD FOOD TRUCK @GoodFoodTruck • KING OF POPS @theKingofPops HANKOOK @Yumbii • SOUPER JENNY @souperJenny • STREATERY @streateryatl