Our Chow Bella correspondents were out in full-force for the first-ever Food Truck Festival, held on Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix this Saturday.
Both Ando Muneno and Dominique Chatterjee (who took the early and late shifts, respectively) were impressed with the event (which sold out about two hours in, we're told) but a tad frustrated with extra-long lines, a bit of a lack of organization up front and a brief power outage. Still, as Muneno puts it, "It's probably the least lame event I've been to in Phoenix."
Both left full and happy.
Find out what they loved and what they'll skip next year -- after the jump.
Muneno's favorite was T-Licious Tacos, which served spicy shrimp tacos and "some damn tasty fancy nachos." He's also a Short Leash fan. So is Chatterjee, who was at the event for more than three hours and still left without trying everything.Her top picks, along with Short Leash:
Tom's Pig Rig: They had some awesome bbq pulled pork that was served on top of cole slaw. I don't even like cole slaw, but this stuff was great. The best part was that for some reason they had a short line, so in just 15 minutes, we got two servings.
Gourmet Fry Bread: This was another huge line that was almost impossible to find the end of, but they gave a full-size fry bread with honey and powdered sugar. So filling!
Sweet Republic: No surprise that these guys [er, gals] are at the top. They were serving pumpkin spice ice cream, a beer/sweet cream ice cream, and a basil lime sorbet. All three were great, and as much as I dislike beer for the bitter hops flavor, the sweet cream tamed the flavor and made the beer ice cream amazingly delicious.
Chatterjee also weighed in on her less-favorite items, which she said was a tough call since it was all pretty good.
Torched Goodness: They served a creme brulee with amazing custard, but there was too much salt on top. I think they aren't used to preparing such tiny sizes (they were 1" in diameter).
Duck Duck Pig: This was the first place we hit, so as starving as I was, it should have tasted like one of the best. They served pulled pork on top of a yellow corn chip, and it had some kind of black bean paste on it. It was kind of flavorless and definitely didn't have enough pulled pork. My impression is that they were trying to go too fancy gourmet.
In conclusion, Chatterjee reports: They needed some kind of sign to mark the back of lines. Lots of them curved and snaked around, going on forever and ever. Sometimes we'd think we got to the end, and then someone would kindly point out that we weren't to the back of the line yet and point way off in the distance. Regardless of that, it was definitely an event worth going to, and I'm sure next year's will be even better.
Check out all the food truck action in our Food Truck Festival slideshow ...
