Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Table Conversations: Tyler Florence [Of Mobile Food, Diversity, The Great Food Truck Race]

Posted Aug 13, 2010 by Jeff Houck

Updated Aug 13, 2010 at 11:11 AM

Food trucks are the new cupcake, to borrow a hackneyed phrase.

They’re fun, they’re cool and they’re the darling of food media. One look at the tweets by food trucks in the Los Angeles area will show you the fun that operators are having. 

A friend there e-mailed the other day to say, “I’ve been to the kogi truck, calbi BBQ (both Korean BBQ), Komodo (Asian fusion tacos), and the Grilled Cheese truck (ribs + gruyere = eternal happiness).”

Damn.

Now, the culinary genre gets its own show this Sunday with Food Network’s “The Great Truck Race” hosted by Tyler Florence.

I had a chance to chat with Florence for one of my Table Conversations podcasts the other day.

An exceprt:

Can you talk about the show’s premise?

We start in L.A. and end up in New York. In every city we stop at, it’s a 72-hour marathon to see who can make the most amount of money.

It’s not an elimination competition show where there’s a judge at the end who says I liked this or I didn’t like that and it’s an arbitrary thing. This is about the money and the people in the towns we go to. The people vote with their wallets.

It’s a business show in a sense. It celebrates the entrepreneurial sipirit of all these great chefs who are choosing to go mobile. It’s a lot of fun to watch. there’s really great food. There were rainstorms and snowstorms and sand storms and breakdowns with their trucks and breakdowns with their relationships. People really strive to make the most of a moment and the best of a bad situation. It makes really great television. It’s one of the most interesting shows I’ve ever seen.

Why do you think food trucks are so appealing right now to the public?

It’s the diversity and a lot of their menus are really great. You get people who specialize in the most interesting things, like a Korean taco or amazing ice cream. Or French bistro food. You have people doing great things in these small kitchens in really popular areas like a city center or a town square or a farmer’s market. They’re right there at the right time. To me, that’s location, location, location. Forget having a great business inside four walls that you can’t do anything about. If you have a truck and there’s a farmer’s market on a Tuesday in one community and one on a Saturday in another community, you can be there where the people are.

You can listen to the entire podcast by clicking here.

In 2008, I did a story on roadside food stands, which included everything from a hot dog stand outside a Home Depot to a Tex-Mex trailer and an empanada truck.

Here’s a gallery of photos I shot while reporting that story.

RELATED:

“The Great Food Truck Race” bios (Link)

ILoveFoodTrucks.com (Link)