We recently reported about a couple of Boston-area food trucks deciding to open brick-and-mortar restaurants, and now we have learned that yet another truck will soon have a permanent spot as well.

According to a post on its Facebook page, the people behind the Pennypackers Food Truck will be opening a brick-and-mortar eatery in Somerville, with the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals approving their plans to open a restaurant in the Magoun Square section of the city. The post indicates that the new spot could be open sometime this summer.

Roxy’s Grilled Cheese and Mei Mei are also going to be opening permanent dining spots, with Roxy’s being in Allston and Mei Mei’s being in the Audubon Circle section of Boston.

Pennypackers, which debuted its truck in the summer of 2011, offers soups, salads, and sandwiches, and the owners now have two trucks–one stationed by the Marine Industrial Park in South Boston, and the other by Boston University. Their website can be found at http://www.pennypackersfoodtruck.com/

http://bostonrestaurants.blogspot.com/2013/05/pennypackers-food-truck-to-open-brick.html

Boston Calling is almost here!

With the inaugural Boston Calling Festival rapidly approaching, festival organizers have revealed plans for the array of food options that will be available at the highly anticipated event. Scheduled for Saturday, May 25 and Sunday May 26 with 18 bands performing, food trucks will play the headliner on the dining lineup with Roxy’s Grilled Cheese, Mei Mei Street Kitchen, The Shuckin’ Truck and Kickass Cupcakes making their way to the festival for the weekend.

Other vendor highlights include Chipotle, serving Carnitas and Sofritos tacos, American Flatbread Pizza Kitchen and their all natural pizzas made from their wood-fired earthen oven, Fenway favorite The Sausage Guy, Halal experts The Chicken & Rice Guys, and the world’s first and only pickle cart, Grillo’s Pickle Cart. Menu highlights can be found below. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options are available at many vendor booths.

Boston Calling will construct two beer gardens within the festival grounds for fans to kick back in, with brews curated by Boston’s Beer Summit. Breweries pouring on-site include Boston’s very own Harpoon Brewery, Woodchuck Hard Cider from Vermont and one of the world’s leading imports from Denmark, Carlsberg. Select wines from Wicked Good Wines will also be available within the beer gardens. Water, sodas, fresh squeezed lemonade and Spindrift, bottled sparkling seltzer made with fresh squeezed juice, will be available for purchase throughout the festival site.

As previously reported, The National and fun. will headline the two-day festival. Curated by Aaron Dessner of The National, the linuep also includes The Shins, Of Monsters and Men, Matt and Kim, Young the Giant, Andrew Bird, Marina and the Diamonds, Matt and Kim, The Walkmen, Youth Lagoon, Portugal. The Man, Cults, Caspian and Bad Rabbits.

General Admission tickets for Boston Calling are sold out, but a limited number of VIP single day and weekend tickets are still available through the festival’s website.

Boston Calling Festival – Food Lineup

Food Trucks:

Roxy’s Grilled Cheese (Saturday only) – Grilled cheese (3-4 variations), Handcut Truffle Fries

Mei Mei Street Kitchen (Sunday only) – Kale, feta and egg salad, Dumplings (tofu or beef) with fried rice, Eggplant and tofu over fried rice, Beef stew over fried rice, Pork spring rolls, Ginger scallion veggie noodles

The Shuckin’ Truck – Lobster and scallop rolls, Fish tacos, Fish bomb, Tuna bomb, Shuckin Shalad (lobster, scallop, fish or tuna), Clam chowder

Kickass Cupcakes – Assorted cupcakes, Cupcake ice cream sundaes, Coffee

Food Vendors:

Chipotle – Carnitas tacos, Sofritos tacos (made from organic tofu, currently only available in California)

American Flatbread Pizza Kitchen – Wood-fired Flatbread pizza (vegetarian, nitrate free meat, Jays heart cheese), Organic salads

The Chicken & Rice Guys – Halal chicken, Lamb gyro/ combo/tofu rice plate or wrap, Tofu quinoa salad, Pita platter, Tabbouleh salad

The Sausage Guy – Pulled pork and steak tip sandwiches, Burritos, Hamburgers

Grillo’s Pickle Cart – Fresh Hand Selected Pickles

http://www.bostonmusicspotlight.com/news-boston-calling-festival-reveals-plans-for-dining-options-may-2013/

Sunbird food truck owners Jaime and Christian Sparrow pose next to their truck in Brewster.
Cape Cod Times/Christine Hochkeppel

 BREWSTER — Although food trucks have been around for hundreds of years and have increased in popularity over the past decade, they’re still relatively new to the Cape.

For the third installment of its “Putting it on the Table” series, the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History invited husband-and-wife team Christian and Jaime Sparrow to talk about their food truck Sunbird, which officially opened in the summer of 2012.

Bob Gowen, owner of the hot dog truck The Dogfather, serves up a quarter-pound, all-beef hot dog with all of the trimmings.
Cape Cod Times/Christine Hochkeppel

“Our hearts are here,” said Christian Sparrow, 39, who grew up in Orleans and met Jaime, whose family spent summers on the Cape, when they were kids. The couple spent 10 years in San Francisco before returning to the Cape in March of 2010.

“The truck offers flexibility and spontaneity, unlike a restaurant,” said Jaime Sparrow, 38, who owned restaurants in San Francisco, where local, fresh ingredients are the rule rather than the exception.

“It’s really simple,” she said of her food philosophy. “The ingredients should shine.”

The Sparrows get ingredients from about a dozen local farms, and about 50 to 70 percent of the ingredients they use are local.

“The better they do, the better I do,” said Lucas Dinwiddie, 31, who owns Halcyon Farm in Brewster, which supplies Sunbird with baby sprouts, herbs and other seasonal greens.

The Dogfather’s quarter-pound, all-beef hot dog with all of the trimmings.
Cape Cod Times/Christine Hochkeppel

“The purpose is to draw attention to all the local food around and the environment,” said Kate Roderick, a natural history museum employee who is on the committee that runs the “Putting it on the Table” series.

Sunbird served about 100 to 150 customers a day last summer, and the Sparrows worked hard to keep up with demand. But that’s not to say the food truck hasn’t hit a few bumps in the road.

Sunbird is currently stationary on Route 6 in Wellfleet because that is the only place the Sparrows could get a license to operate.

Moving the truck to Orleans for the fall season would be ideal, but figuring out the zoning and licensing laws of each town can be intimidating, Jaime Sparrow said.

For Robert Gowen, the owner and operator of The Dogfather, a food truck that is actually a trailer attached to a pickup truck, getting a license to open in Bourne took three months.

Like Sunbird, The Dogfather, which opened in February, is not mobile — Gowen must park at 1025 Sandwich Road, near the now-defunct John’s Capeside Diner, for licensing reasons.

“I keep it simple,” said Gowen, 60, who serves hot dogs, chili dogs and Italian sausages cooked to order on a gas grill.

The menu at Sunbird changes depending on what’s in season, although Jaime said the fish tacos with chipotle crema “will always be on the menu” because people love them.

“Jaime will show up and see what’s fresh,” Dinwiddie said. “In a way it’s limiting, but it’s also flexible.”

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130513/CCOLBARKER/305130314

via twitter

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x94505088/Food-Truck-Festival-rolls-into-Kendall-June-8#axzz2TDlBXxsv

The Sausage Guy will be one of the many vendors at Boston Calling.

Mark your calendars for Boston Calling, a two-day music festival to take place on City Hall Plaza on May 25 and 26. With a lineup of 18 live performances, the place will be jamming.

In addition to the music, food trucks and restaurants will be offering a smorgasbord of more than 75 dishes and lots of brews to go with. Roxy’s Grilled Cheese, Mei Mei Street Kitchen, The Shuckin’ Truck and Kickass Cupcakes, along with American Flatbread Pizza Kitchen and the famous Fenway-favorite, The Sausage Guy, are all part of the lineup. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options are available at many vendor booths, and two beer gardens will be part of the festivities.

You’ll be able to chow down to the beats of Fun. The National, Of Monsters and Men, and The Shins among many more. With general admission tickets sold out, there are VIP single-day and weekend tickets available. A portion of all proceeds from Boston Calling will go to the Music Therapy Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, which helps patients cope during their hospitalization by bringing the joy of music to their bedsides. Some proceeds will also go to support One Fund Boston ($185 for single-day and $350 for the weekend; click here for details on the full lineup and tickets).

http://blog.zagat.com/2013/05/boston-calling-music-fest-boasts-tasty.html

CLOVER’S TRUCK AT SOWA OPEN MARKET. PHOTO VIA SOWA FACEBOOK PAGE

These days, there’s a food truck on every street corner in Boston. And while the trucks are definitely a cool way to get your lunch, it must be said that some of the offerings aren’t always the healthiest. (Grilled cheese and cupcakes, anyone?) But don’t despair yet—so that you may hold onto your food-on-the-go habit, we found five of the healthiest food trucks in the city.

Clover Food Lab

This company is obsessed with keeping your food as fresh as possible. The menus change daily, and according to Clover’s website, they don’t own a single freezer (seriously), source as much as possible locally and organically, and make everything but barbeque sauce, mayonnaise, and ketchup fresh daily. If you’re as intrigued as we are, track down one of the Clover food trucks, which can be found all over the city throughout the course of the week.

Prices range from $2 to $7, hours vary by location. 

Compliments

Compliments, which was started last year and rotates among a variety of locations, uses fresh, in-season produce from local farms to craft its made-to-order foods. Most of the options are sandwiches, though there are also mouthwatering (and often gluten-free) sides, like tempura veggies and sweet potato fries, and fruit-based desserts.

Prices range from $2 to $7, open for lunch and dinner.

Momogoose

Founded by two MIT alums, this truck serves up authentic southeast Asian fare (think ramen and pho), while making it a point to keep fat and calories down. And you can feel good about your food since Momogoose invests its profits in charities like the UN’s World Food Programme. Last but not least, with two trucks circulating, you’re bound to find it when you need it.

$6 for an entree or $10 for a combo, open from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 or 3:30 p.m.

Lefty’s Silver Cart

Lefty’s specializes in vegetarian sandwiches, with tasty-sounding options like a portabella mushroom “burger” and a fig and goat cheese sandwich. They also sometimes come out with soup or salad specials and serve all sandwiches with a veggie side. You can find the truck at SoWa Open Market on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., or at Union Square Plaza on Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Prices range from $5 to $8, see hours above.

Mother Juice

Mother Juice combines two food trends: fresh juice and smoothies. The truck can be found at SoWa and other area farmers’ markets with a menu that changes weekly and features produce from Massachusetts farms. Plus, the pulp that isn’t used in intriugingly-named juices like Liquid Sunshine and Boston on My Mind is recycled into treats like ice pops, fruit leather, baked goods, and more.

Locations and hours vary.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/blog/2013/05/08/healthy-food-trucks-boston/

via twitter

This winter we reported that a Sri Lankan restaurant in Malden was planning to start up a food truck, and now we have learned that the truck is indeed open for business.

According to posters on the Chowhound site, Biryani Park’s food truck is up and running, with one location for it being at Milk Street and Kilby Street in the Financial District of Boston. The restaurant’s Facebook page indicates that it is also stationed on Belvedere Street by the Prudential Center in the Back Bay, and one of the Chowhound posters says that the truck may be coming to Charlestown as well. (We are still trying to confirm this last location.)

Biryani Park, which first opened on Route 99 in Malden in the summer of 2011, offers a variety of Sri Lankan, Indian, and Indo-Chinese fare. The website for the dining spot can be found at http://snsmarketinc.com/, while its Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/biryani.parkmaldenmass

http://bostonrestaurants.blogspot.com/2013/05/biryani-park-food-truck-is-up-and.html

Derek Dawson (left) and owner James DiSabatino in a Roxy’s Grilled Cheese truck at Dewey Square. Roxy’s plans to open a restaurant in Allston in September.

Roxy’s Grilled Cheese trucks have logged many miles and melted a lot of cheese over the past couple of years, making them two of most popular mobile restaurants in Boston. Now, owner James DiSabatino wants to expand the business by staying put; he is planning to open a brick-and-mortar version of Roxy’s in September, following the lead of some other local food truck companies.

“It’ll be so great to have something that doesn’t break down on you,” DiSabatino said. “Something where you can put the key in the door, unlock it, and open.”

The new Roxy’s will be located at 485 Cambridge St. in Allston’s Union Square, an area that is already home to restaurants such as Lone Star, Deep Ellum, and Grasshopper. DiSabatino, 25, said he plans to double Roxy’s staff by adding about 20 employees.

“The whole purpose is for this place to act as our truck commissary and our brick-and-mortar spot at the same time,” he said. “The two will run out of the same space.”

DiSabatino said he expects the restaurant’s menu offerings to be “in the same vein” as what’s offered on his food trucks, including Green Muenster Melt: muenster cheese, homemade guacamole, and applewood bacon.

“This [restaurant] literally gives us more room to be creative, more fun, and more consistent all at the same time,” he said. “It will also be a bit more predictable, and I could really use that right now.”

Roxy’s will become the latest in a growing line of nomadic restaurants in the Boston area that have opened — or plan to open — permanent locations.

Clover Food Lab started as a single truck at MIT in 2008 and has grown to seven trucks in Boston, Cambridge, and Burlington.

Last year, it added two restaurants, both in Cambridge, and expects to open three or four more this year, including two in the next month — in Burlington and Brookline Village.

“The original idea behind the truck was to use it as a test ground to prototype a menu for a brick-and-mortar restaurant,” said Lucia Jazayeri, communications director for Clover, which features fresh, simply prepared foods.

In the beginning, Jazayeri said, Clover expected to operate out of a truck for only six weeks before moving to a permanent location. But when the truck stopped running, customers clamored for it to return.

“We never thought the trucks would be the thing,” she said. “We were always focused on restaurants and really still are, but trucks are a good way to test a menu because you have the chance to get to know customers and experiment, without the large overhead of a restaurant.”

Bon Me, a Vietnamese food truck, also opened a restaurant of the same name in Cambridge’s Kendall Square earlier this year, and the Chinese-American truck Mei Mei Street Kitchen plans to open a restaurant in late June near Boston University.

“Food trucks are the perfect incubator for food-service professionals to move their business along,” said Ron Sarni, the president and founder of Boston Food Truck Alliance, a trade organization.

“The restaurant industry is very high risk. Most don’t make it, and this is a solid way for people to have proof-of-concept and figure out what they need to do in a brick-and-mortar.”

Sarni said food trucks are also a good way for restaurants to increase brand recognition, which is why other local establishments such as Area Four in Cambridge or Paris Creperie in Brookline have launched food trucks based on their well-established restaurants.

“It’s more beneficial for a brick-and-mortar to launch a food truck than vice versa, just because it’s such a great bang for your buck in branding,” he said.

“This is not a trend; this is the evolution of the restaurant business.”

DiSabatino said he realizes part of Roxy’s attraction is the way the food is served, from a vehicle parked on a street. Taking that out of the equation, he said, is a risk.

“It’ll be a challenge to take the brand and experience and convert it to brick-and-mortar experience,” he said. “But we haven’t reached our potential brandwise or aesthetically yet, and I think it could finally come into its own here. I have a good feeling about it.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/05/06/food-truck-fare-finding-home/sEvxNnN5tKCLqGPydL7EwL/story.html

The Brookline-based Paris Creperie truck will join a festival of more than 20 food trucks in Kendall Square in June. Photo courtesy Food Truck Festivals of New England.

The latest innovation for Cambridge’s Kendall Square is a festival for food trucks.

More than 20 trucks offering everything from gourmet grilled cheese to brown sugar-marinated hot dogs will roll into Kendall Square on June 8 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The festival is the first in Kendall Square by Food Truck Festivals of New England and will be held along Broadway and Third Street.

Admission wristbands are $7 by ordering in advance online and $10 at the festival. A dollar of each ticket goes to the MIT Sean Collier Memorial Fund.

Some of the food trucks participating in the festival are: Area 4, Taco Party, Captain Marden’s Cod Squad, Chubby Chickpea Mobile and The Sweet Truck by Flour Girls Baking Co.

The festival will kick off the 2013 Food Truck Festivals of New England season, which includes a total of six festivals in New England.

For a full list of food trucks or to buy tickets, visit the Food Trucks of New England website.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/cambridge/2013/05/food_truck_festival_coming_to.html

Credit Jeff Sullivan

Butch Rich and Jim Brown started their Hot Dogs and More stand in Norton over 30 years ago, and now they’re still going strong.

“We started in 1978 coming right out of the blizzard,” Brown said.

“That was so much fun; it was the best thing that ever happened to this town,” Rich said, laughing.

Rich said Brown was his nephew, and Rich’s sister (Brown’s mother) helped them get the business off the ground.

“The stand was about half the size and it was right in the center of town where the Walgreens is now,” Rich said.

The pair started the food stand when no one else was really operating food trucks.

“Years ago, families used to go to the 50′s diners, and now they go to food trucks,” Brown said. “We never really gave it much thought, but as it turns out we were the first truck around and now it’s one of the biggest booms in the area.”

Brown and Rich said they originally catered to truckers before Route 495 went in.

“When they had the dump in that era over in Attleboro right over the line, we’d see 200 to 300 trash trucks a day,” Brown said. “There were a lot of truck drivers when we started. The truck drivers were the driving force behind our business.”

The pair is gearing towards families now, since the truck traffic has died down. The space they are at now allows them to have more kid friendly surroundings.

“We try to have more for the kids to do and play here,” Brown said. “We’re adding more this year. We’ll have seesaws, more playground stuff, all kinds of things for kids to do. That way they can bring the whole family here, the kids can play and everybody can eat.”

Rich added they are due for more recreational items this week.

“Nowadays it’s way more family oriented,” Rich said. “Get everybody out together.”

The pair has added Del’s Frozen Lemonade this year and will soon be adding an ice cream truck.

“It’s going to be out front all the time,” Rich said. “It’s like the old fashioned novelties ice creams.”

Brown and Rich have both lived here their entire lives and have also served on the Board of Selectmen.

“The stand is kind of a fixture here in town,” Brown said. “It’s been here longer than most people.”

The pair sponsors youth sports teams most years, and donate to many civic organizations in town.

They agreed, however, that it’s not exactly charity, as it’s now mostly the town that supports the Hot Dogs and More Stand.

“We want to thank the people for supporting us over the years,” Rich said. “We appreciate the business and in return we try to give them a good product.”

Hot Dogs and More is located on 73 West Main St. and is open Mon-Fri, 10:30am-7pm; Sat, 10:30am-4pm.

http://norton.patch.com/articles/hot-dogs-and-more-keeping-family-for-over-30-years#photo-14223906