Ready to serve. Owner Tony Vastis and his Blue Donkey Streatery food truck team can often be found serving up Greek favourites in Celebration Square.

Two Mississauga food trucks are enjoying the spotlight at the CNE’s food truck rally this weekend.

Mike’s Doghouse and Blue Donkey Streatery are among 17 trucks parked just inside the Princes’ Gates. The event continues until 10 p.m. tonight.

Mike Sutton will be bringing his Mike’s Doghouse trailer — which serves gourmet hot dogs with toppings like pulled pork, peameal bacon, chili and fries — from its usual base at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus.

“I’ve been going to the Ex since I was 4 years old,” said Sutton. “I’m humbled and honoured because they invited us to this event.”

Erin Mills resident Tony Vastis and his Blue Donkey Streatery crew will be serving up greek favorites like souvlaki, gyros, honey and pita sticks. Blue Donkey is a regular sight in to city centre, and was the first gourmet food truck licensed by the City to serve Celebration Square. Vastis comes from a food business family: his father operated a hotdog cart at the Heartland Canadian Tire for 24 years while his brother owns two Greek restaurants in Mississauga.

Other trucks at the CNE event hail from Toronto, Ancaster, Maple, Fort Erie, Uxbridge and Washago.

For more on Mississauga’s entries, visit mikesdoghouse.ca and bluedonkeystreatery.com.

http://www.mississauga.com/news/business/article/1492288–local-food-trucks-serving-cne-crowd-at-rally

The Blue Donkey Streatery, Missisauga’s newest food truck, is decked out in blue and white, with a big cartoon donkey on the side. Like most things about this operation, it’s a gloriously unsubtle reference to owners Tony Vastis, Elias Vastis, Dimitri Velonis and Manny Tsouvalas’s Greek heritage. The foursome—after assorted experience in the food industry (Sneaky Dee’s, Caffe Demetre, the Drake Hotel Café) and traditional hot dog stands across the city—got their big break when they were turned down by the notorious Toronto A La Cart program, only to be offered a vendor space in Mississauga’s new Celebration Square.

Running on two 100-pound propane tanks (with a gas generator for electricity), the truck has two standard refrigerators with freezers on top, two gyros rotisseries, a grill, a flat-top, a fryer, a mise-en-place prep space and just enough counter for food assembly. Like a donkey, the truck is slow and steady yet reliable (i.e., it maxes out at about 80 km/h).

The menu of “gourmet food at street prices” tops out at $8 and is mostly Greek with a few Canadian touches, like the obligatory poutine. Diners can choose from classics like grilled souvlaki on a pita (chicken $5.50, pork $5), gyros on a pita (chicken $5.50, beef $5, chicken/beef mix $5.25) or Greek salad (small $4.50, large $7.50). There’s also a fried calamari pita ($4.75)—with Greek salad, tzatziki and hand-cut fries—and a Greek grilled cheese ($4.75) with spicy feta, tomatoes, Greek cheeses and fries. The Greek poutine ($4.50–$5.50) douses hand-cut fries with homemade gravy and feta (along with a medley of other cheeses). The whole thing can also be stuffed into a pita for a gyros poutine (chicken $7, beef $6.50). For dessert, the Blue Donkey offers “honey and pita sticks” ($2.50), a kind of loukoumades gone street: thin slices of pita bread are deep-fried, drizzled with Greek honey and sprinkled with cinnamon.

Open now for its second week, the Blue Donkey is most often parked in the square from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Torontonians not quite moved to venture so far west will be able to catch the truck at future Food Truck Eats events and at festivals around the city. In true food truck fashion, you can get its location via Twitter or Facebook.

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