Today on Food on Fridays we encounter a trendy way to dine — well, lunch —  in North America. At least it seems to have become trendy lately. What’s the concept? To me, it’s an old one: eating from a lunch truck.

I find it a bit odd that lunch trucks are now all the rage.  There was even a whole festival of them here for a week in January, where a bunch of them were outside the Vancouver Art Museum. However, that week was a typical Vancouver week, weather-wise, i.e. it rained all week. So, eating al fresco at a lunch wagon didn’t have much appeal.

But this past Tuesday the weather was absolutely gorgeous — not a cloud in a sky, not much wind, not too cold. Just a perfect day, weather-wise. And it turned out that a couple of the trendiest lunch wagons actually park by the Art Museum all the time, not just during that festival.

So on that perfect weather day this week, Chris and I were lured out to play hooky from our tasks (job-hunting for him, working on my women photographers project for me). We headed downtown and tried lunch from a food truck while sitting outside in the sunshine. The truck we picked had an upscale take on a traditional American (and I assume Canadian?) favorite: a grilled cheese sandwich.

Mom’s Grilled Cheese Food Truck, Vancouver

Yes, it’s a truck that has a few variations on a grilled cheese. And yes, those people are all waiting for food from that food truck. There was actually quite a line-up (=Canadian for a “line” or a “queue” ). It seems to be quite popular.

The menu had a bunch of combinations (e.g. grilled cheese with tomato, grilled cheese with bacon), and most of them had cutesy names. Unfortunately, the only name that stuck with me to report to you today is one of the few non-grilled cheese options, something called the “Elvis”,  peanut butter and bananas on grilled white bread.

We didn’t order  that.

We didn’t order any of the cute-named ones, actually. Instead, we opted for 2 “Classics” (that was the name): our choices were sourdough and cheddar for one, swiss and multi-grain for the other.  The sandwiches are served in a paper cone, with a pickle spear and potato chips included underneath the sandwich.  In the photo below, I’ve rearranged a single cone to include one half of each type:

Cheddar on sourdough (top), Swiss on Multi-grain (bottom)

The sandwiches weren’t great, but they weren’t horrible, either. And it was a nice day to sit outside and try it — although I think trying it once is enough.

At least these trendy food trucks are better than the one I recall seeing outside one place where I worked in California.  It was shortly after we moved there,  and it was my first up-close encounter with a lunch truck. I don’t think I ever ate anything from that one, though. Everyday when it pulled up outside the office, our secretary would announce its arrival by calling out “the roach coach is here.”

Luckily, Mom’s Grilled Cheese was better than that.