The Vancouver street food scene has been a sad, repetitive song played over and over for years. The Lyrics were all about hot dogs in the summer and chestnuts in the winter, boring (even if the hot dogs have Japanese fixins’ ). Thankfully those days appear to be over with the City of Vancouver’s new policy on food trucks. Food trucks have been a big part of other cities culinary scene for years with colorful trucks rolling all over town with everything from taco’s in LA to fine French food in NYC.
Vancouver’s first Food truck is the Roaming Dragon, serving pan asian delights out of a state of the art truck in various locations throughout the city. On Saturdays you can find them at the Trout Lake Farmers Market at John Hendry Park in East Van from 9-2 (check out their website for other locations and times http://www.roamingdragon.com/ ). The family and I headed down to East Van on the first rainy day in a month to see what the Roaming Dragon had to offer, and I am happy to say that we were not disappointed.
We met Jason and the rest of the crew in their slick looking truck and placed our order, which was done on an Iphone that was synced with their POS (point of sale) system, very cool. We ordered the duck confit salad, the pork belly sliders, Korean short rib tacos, chicken karaage, rice balls and some lychee and basil lemonade. While the food was being prepared I was given a quick tour of the truck and it really is a gourmet kitchen on wheels. The food was all amazing, the duck confit salad was perfect with orange and watermelon pieces that balanced well against the salt of the duck, The pork belly sliders were on steamed Asian buns with cucumber (it might have been pickled?) and green onion and were unique (in a good way) and very tasty. The tacos were great with shredded carrots and nori which was the only thing I wasn’t a huge fan of as it took a little away from the taste of the short ribs, a very minor problem though. The chicken karaage was as good as I’ve had anywhere in the city and the rice balls were fantastic, nice and crisp on the outside and soft on the inside with a hint of cumin or something south Asian that really gave great flavor. The lemonade was the single best lemonade I have ever had, with the basil and lychee adding a grown up character to this popular street side beverage.
Not only is the food amazing, it’s really affordable with most menu items priced at $4 – $6 and any 2 items for $10. All of the packaging is biodegradable, even the ones that look like Styrofoam are rice paper based. The forks are plastic though so maybe opt for the chopsticks if you’re worried about your carbon footprint, I wonder if they know about aspenware? http://aspenware.ca/ Just a suggestion.
Vancouver needs more trucks like this and if the guys that run this one have their way there will be more soon as the parent company, Gourmet Syndicate ( http://gourmetsyndicate.com/ ), is set to light the Vancouver street food scene on fire. I can’t wait.
For all of you “new media” lovers here’s some more places you can find them.
http://twitter.com/DragonTruck
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragontruck/
http://www.facebook.com/DragonTruck
Scott.
The Roaming Dragon is the rock star of the Vancouver food truck scene and has been on quite the roll since I first met the team a couple years back. They’ve recently brought Chef Tina Fineza on in a consulting role to update and relaunch their menu on both the street food and catering sides of their business. A bold move for something that was already a success but Jason Apple and Jory Simkin. Roaming Dragon co-owners, are always looking to improve and grow their empire on wheels.
The venue for this relaunch was District 319 on Main St between Hastings and Cordova, not a part of town I frequent but the space was super cool with Asian inspired décor that suited the event perfectly. The new food was a big hit as was their well known basil lychee lemonade with a shot of vodka added for adults only. This event really showed what an awesome job these guys do with their catering business.
