Like a buffet on wheels, Durham’s annual Central Park Food Truck Rodeo features something for everyone, from hardcore foodies to people just looking for quality cheap eats. This year’s event was the largest ever, with over 60 vendors participating. Food choices ranged from state-fair favorites like kettle corn and burgers to artisanal sausages and grilled cheese sandwiches to more exotic offerings like curry and Jamaican jerk chicken.
Some advice? Go early. We arrived a half an hour before opening time and the rodeo was only lightly populated. By 12:30, the lines were already 10 people deep at some of the more popular trucks.
Not even 12:30, and customers are already lining up at the food trucks.
Barone Meatball Company serves up various varieties of, well, balls (and they don’t seem to mind the obvious jokes), including Italian-style, crab, fish, and veggie. Their crab balls were a solid, if salty, take on crab cakes. They lacked big chunks of crab and were somewhat overpriced at $10, but the remoulade which accompanied them added a pleasant kick.
Chai’s Global Street Food offers Mexican and Asian favorites. Their excellent pork belly buns, a take on banh mi, featured unctuous, savory pork belly accented by a sweet sauce and given brightness by cilantro.
Durham’s beloved American Meltdown delivered with Pigs ‘N’ Figs, a fig, goat cheese, and speck sandwich kissed with balsamic vinegar. The tangy goat cheese dominated the sandwich, with the figs and vinegar adding occasional hits of sweetness and sourness. The speck was harder to detect, except as a faint hint of porky flavor, but the combination was stellar nonetheless. The bread came out golden and beautifully crisp, a crunchy counterpoint to the creamy goodness within.
(Fans of American Meltdown: They’re doing a pop-up restaurant this September!)
Baton Rouge Cuisine serves Cajun dishes like gumbo and jambalaya. Its etouffee was a disappointment: heavy, floury, and pastelike.
Has the cupcake trend hit maximum saturation yet? It certainly looked that way at the rodeo (not that we’re complaining). We counted three cupcake trucks, a cake truck, and a truck doing “cake shots,” and brought home a foursome of cupcakes from Sweet Traditions by LeAne.
All in all, there’s great food to be had at the rodeo, and so much of it, in such variety, that we’re already marking our calendars for next year.
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