Nomad Gourmet founder Nick Horne says the company is rolling into 2013 with a new high-profile chef, a menu makeover and expanded services outside of downtown Halifax.

Nomad Gourmet is on a roll heading into 2013.

The Halifax-area food truck, which has a new high-profile chef in Graeme Ruppel, is getting a menu makeover and will soon be offering service outside of the downtown.

Owner-operator Nick Horne said Monday the changes will help drum up business during the winter months.

“If I can move my business around and serve more people, then that’s better for everybody,” Horne said in an interview while preparing to serve a crowd later that night during New Year’s Eve festivities in the Grand Parade.

Ruppel, formerly of Brooklyn Warehouse and Getaway Meat Mongers, joined Nomad Gourmet shortly before Christmas.

He had been operating a pop-up restaurant, Coastal@Night, in the Coastal Cafe space for the past seven months.

The chef said the biggest change in moving to a gourmet food truck is the type of cuisine he will be creating.

“Previously, I was looking at doing five-course tasting menus. Now it’s much more a sandwich focus, a hand-held focus.”

While he has mostly been busy with the catering side of the business so far, Ruppel is also helping reshape the mobile eatery’s fare.

For instance, a new menu will be offered starting in the next couple of weeks.

Horne said the menu will include a new gourmet burger, as well as a version of Ruppel’s signature fried chicken and waffle dish.

“The popular things are going to stay. But you’ll definitely see some big changes,” said Horne.

The chef won’t reveal what is going to be in new burger, saying the ingredients are still being tested and may change. And the chicken and waffle dish also still needs work, Ruppel said.

“We’re playing around with some ways of making that carryable.”

Besides the new chef and revamped menu, Nomad Gourmet also plans to be on the move more in the Halifax region.

The food truck will soon be adding service in Burnside Park in Dartmouth and possibly a location in Bedford as well.

Nomad Gourmet, which shares the local food-truck scene with Food Wolf, has been operating on Argyle Street since August.

Horne said his vending licence for the spot beside city hall expired Jan. 1 and he is hoping to renew the permit in the next couple of weeks.

But he is also eager to try out some new locations.

“I’ve been doing a lot of legwork the past few months to find these spots. They’re hard to find. It is private property and have to get permission to go on them and then negotiate payment and everything.”

Diners can keep up with Nomad Gourmet’s whereabouts on Twitter at @nomadgourmet and Facebook at facebook/nomadgourmet.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/355722-local-food-truck-expanding-its-horizons

A customer is seen purchasing a drink from the Duck N Roll food truck in downtown Chicago. Halifax will soon be getting a new addition to it’s street dining scene, as the Nomad Gourmet plans to hit the streets in August. (AP)

Sometimes Halifax is slow on the uptake. That doesn’t faze Nick Horne in the least.

The mechanic/foodie-cum-streetside restaurateur is plotting, with wicked methodical muster, the next great takeover of the Halifax food scene.

Secret weapon? His Nomad Gourmet food truck, hitting Halifax streets in August.

While other cities have embraced gourmet street eats — Hamilton’s got Gorilla Cheese; Ottawa loves Relish — Halifax has maintained its practised wait-and-see stance.

Horne says his food truck will be a solution to what he calls “the lunch conundrum,” when you want great food but don’t have time for a great restaurant.

“Nomad,” he says, “bridges the gap.”

The truck will pick up where Bud the Spud falls from gastronomic grace.

Horne is targeting Haligonians, not tourists, and he’s not hawking grease.

“I’m a foodie at heart,” he says.

The 33-year-old cures his own charcuterie, bakes bread and puts away food from his 1,000-square-foot Tantallon garden.

Not what you might expect from a Beaver Bank boy who has spent his adult life as an auto mechanic.

Nomad Gourmet isn’t what you might expect from street food, either. There isn’t even a fryer on the truck.

Ah, the truck. Horne picked up his 1977 Chevy one-ton step van (like a Purolator truck but with a four sinks, a steam table, a griddle and two fridges) in Los Angeles, the street-food mecca, back in June.

“I ate a few tacos (in L.A.),” Horne says. “I ate some great carnitas.”

Horne planned his 12,000-kilometre, round-trip, truck hunt (because “down there, the trucks have no rust on them”) around a “beautiful,” red step van.

He soon discovered the truck’s kitchen wasn’t up to code.

That day?

“I ate at Denny’s,” he laments. Nomad Gourmet won’t feature anything close.

“We’re starting with fusion tacos,” Horne says. “Southwestern-inspired, pulled pork, brisket.” Nomad will have sandwiches, eastern Canadian dishes, some seasonal dishes, Hibiscus flower sweetened tea and agua frescas.

Horne’s only promise: “If something is working, you’ll see it stay.”

If the menu seems like a moving target, that’s precisely the point. Flexibility is what differentiates food trucks from bricks-and-mortar restaurants.

Street chefs were early adopters of social media tools like Twitter, where followers can find trucks as they move around. Horne is @NomadGourmet.

So will Nomad sneak from its city-sanctioned spot on Argyle across from the World Trade and Convention Centre?

We’ll see.

Horne likes that he’s subject to the same health inspection as regular restaurants and happy to rent his spot from the city because it offers stability.

But he wants to offer breakfast and current rules don’t allow vending before 9 a.m.

“The premise of a food truck is that it moves around,” he says. “But your vending licence with the city is tied to that spot and that spot only. So we are lobbying council to lift that so food trucks can share spots or have more than one spot.”

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/119010-lowe-make-way-for-nomad-gourmet