This spring’s round of Fancy Food Truck Friday just keeps getting better.

Hosts Webster’s Community Pharmacy and Webster’s Wine & Spirits have announced that there’ll be music along with the food trucks:  the fifth grade “McKinley Rock Stars” from McKinley Elementary School, led by teacher Raimer Rojas, will be performing.  The entertainers are part of a program called “Little Kids Rock,” a non-profit that provides instruments and music classes to schools where music programs were victims of budget cuts.  Performances start at 6:45 PM.

They have also announced which food trucks will be at the event:

• Greenz on Wheelz
• Me So Hungry
• Bool BBQ
• The Fry Girl
• Lurdo
• My Delight Cupcakery

Fancy Food Truck Friday runs from 4-9 PM, and caps off a full day of fundraising for sponsor Danny’s Farm, whose mobile petting farm will also be at the event. Fancy Food Truck Friday wll be held at the Webster’s complex parking lot, 2450 N. Lake Avenue.  Parking is available in the lot and on the street.

Here’s the McKinley Rock Stars in action:

http://www.altadenablog.com/2013/05/mckinleys-musical-rock-stars-added-to-fancy-food-truck-friday.html

Yes, it’s springtime, and the second Friday of the month is coming — that means it’s the return of Fancy Food Truck Friday at the Webster’s complex parking lot, 2450 N. Lake Avenue.

On Friday, April 12, from 5-9 PM, Webster’s Community Pharmacy and Webster’s Liquors will host six food trucks as the monthly event returns after its winter hiatus.   In addition, customers will enjoy 20% special savings at Webster’s RX Gift Boutique and Webster’s Liquors. This sale is held exclusively during Fancy Food Truck Fridays only.

The Danny’s Farm mobile petting zoo will also be there from 6-8 PM, to meet the friendly animals.

The food truck line-up for April is:

• Roll N Lobster
• Rosas’s Bella Cucina
• Hungry Nomad
• Baby’s Badass Burgers
• Me So Hungry
• Sugar Babies Cupcakery

Parking is available on the lot and on surrounding streets.  For more information, call  626-797-1163

http://www.altadenablog.com/2013/04/fancy-food-truck-friday-returns-april-12-with-some-favorite-gourmet-trucks.html

Chef Roy Choi of the Kogi Truck

This final installment in our series on Altadena’s food culture looks at some established and emerging trends and players as the town is increasingly recognized as a place where new culinary ideas are conceived, tested and tasted.

Institute for Domestic Technology: One of the offshoots of the now-closed Altadena Urban Farmer’s Market, the institute uses a rather steampunk name while offering a selection of courses on food crafting, usually held at the Zane Grey Estate. Shepherded by Joseph Shuldiner, who is working to bring a certified farmer’s market to Altadena, the institute has fall and winter classes on stovetop coffee roasting, artisanal cocktail mixing and homemade liqueurs and bitters. Instructors include Joshua McIver, director of mixology at Palate Food & Wine of Glendale; Ian Riley, coffee roaster at LAMILL Coffee in Alhambra; and Gloria Putnam and Stephen Rudicel, the residents of the Zane Grey Estate who teach “milkcrafting,” or making your own cheese, chevre, and cottage cheese with fresh goat milk. Rudicel also owns and operates The Press restaurant in Claremont.

Bulgarini Gelato: Bulgarini is one of the local institutions LA Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold reviewed when he received his 2007 Pulitzer Prize for food criticism. Leo Bulgarini has since moved from a cart to a real gelateria, hidden in the back of a tired shopping mall on Altadena Drive and Lake Avenue. During one summer visit, the smell of peaches ripening in crates outside the shop was pleasantly overpowering — Bulgarini uses only fresh, mostly local ingredients in his handmade delights, which have received international recognition. While he makes his nut supplying restaurants on L.A.’s west side with gelato, the native of Rome does good business here at home, and has recently remodeled the shop to include an espresso bar. On warm summer Saturdays, you can order a pasta meal and watch a free Italian movie projected on the wall of the building outside. Bulgarini Gelato is a spoonful of Italy right in Altadena.

Fancy food trucks: It’s not all handmade, organic, urban homesteading in Altadena — food truck culture is alive, well and vibrant. It probably started when the Kogi Korean barbecue truck first made an appearance in Altadena in the summer of 2009. Since then, Altadenans have fallen in love with their gourmet food trucks. It’s a rare night when there’s no food truck parked near the Coffee Gallery or at the local Ralphs supermarket, which favors the

A Rockin ice Food Truck

A Rockin Ice shaved ice truck. The stores at the Webster’s complex at 2450 N. Lake Ave. draw families as well as hipsters to the monthly Fancy Food Truck Friday event in their parking lot, with an ever-changing rotation of six trucks. This month the Sidewalk Cafe, a new West Pasadena coffee house just across the street from Altadena, hosts a late night Thursday lineup of food trucks for that underserved part of town.

Will Altadena become the next Williamsburg — the trendy neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., which also has a food-centric scene? Hard to tell. Altadena’s food culture is home-based and small-scale. It will no doubt develop to be its own only-in-Altadena experience.

At the moment, Altadena is a town with a food scene, but no “destination” restaurant. That may change soon: Zane Grey Estate owner and restaurateur Stephen Rudicel recently announced that he’s acquired a property and hopes to build a wood-fired gourmet pizza restaurant in his hometown — along with a food truck version, of course. It’s Altadena!

Timothy Rutt is the publisher and editor of Altadenablog.com. Altadena Junction appears weekly in the Sunday Valley Sun.

http://www.lacanadaonline.com/news/tn-pas-1023-altadena-food-revolution,0,7134632.story

Is Altadena the center of a food revolution?

Sure, we’ve got fast-food chains and a handful of fine independent restaurants, but why is Altadena getting a reputation as a foodie paradise?

Because we have a revolution going on in backyards and home kitchens, with individual growers, bakers and craftspeople displaying a passion for good, healthy and interesting food. They raise crops, they bake, they keep goats and chickens, they carve edible fungi from their trees, and they bring a hand-crafted sensibility to what they do.

This revolution is springing up through myriad individuals and groups. There’s RIPE Altadena (Ripe In-season Produce Exchange), where backyard farmers meet monthly to trade their excess crops. There’s the Arroyo Food Co-op, an Altadena-based organization that is selling memberships and working hard to create an alternative, local source of groceries in the area.

The spiritual center of Altadena’s food revolution, though, is in one of the largest homes in town, on Mariposa Street. Stephen Rudicel’s family bought the dilapidated estate of famed Western novelist Zane Grey in the early 1970s. Rudicel, a lecturer in interdisciplinary studies at Cal Poly Pomona and the owner of the Press restaurant in Claremont, moved back to the home about eight years ago along with his fiancée, Gloria Putnam, who works in sales and engineering for Eastman Kodak Co.

The pair worked hard on the estate over the years, but not just to keep the wear and tear at bay. They’ve also turned it into an urban farm.

“We did our best to kill the lawn,” Putnam said. “We’ve been replacing it with edibles.”

Indeed, the front yard has a collection of raised garden beds growing a variety of crops, covered with netting to keep away the chickens.

Yes, they keep chickens — what farm doesn’t? — but the estate is known for its goats. The Mariposa Creamery is Putnam and Rudicel’s micro-dairy, where the output of their small herd goes to create a variety of cheeses and supplies them with fresh milk. (Health authorities frown on home dairies unless they follow a bunch of regulations, so only the couple legally can enjoy the fruits of their labors).

Putnam is a force of nature whose involvement extends beyond urban homesteading to other causes such as the Arroyo Time Bank, where members can bank hours of their own labor and barter with others. Under the Time Bank’s umbrella, Putnam helped put together the Altadena Urban Farmer’s Market.

The farmer’s market was an almost-monthly event held on the estate grounds, where home cooks, bakers, craftspeople and small-scale food producers set up booths and sold their wares. More than 300 people attended the first market in October 2010 despite driving rain. Month to month, it continued to grow. In fact, it grew too big for the estate. The final market in May lured more than 1,000 people, including many from L.A.’s west side.

But it seems that Altadena’s food revolution is just beginning. In Part II, we’ll look at the soon-to-open weekly Altadena Farmer’s Market and market manager Joseph Shuldiner’s ambitious plans for it.

http://www.pasadenasun.com/news/tn-pas-1009-altadena,0,6427075.story