For Worcester, the food-truck phenomenon started back in the late-19th century when T.H. Buckley’s Worcestermade lunch carts started serving sandwiches, boiled eggs, pie and coffee to the late-shift workers in factories downtown.

Today, a new generation of highend, gourmet food trucks is on the road, and on Saturday, July 14, a caravan will pull into Elm Park for the Food Truck Festival of New England. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. the trucks will be serving up everything from artisan grilled cheese sandwiches to falafel to authentic Texas barbecue.

Participating trucks scheduled to serve include Away Café, Gabi’s Smoke Shack, Big Moe’s M&M Ribs, Go Fish!, Bon Me, Grilled Cheese Nation, Boston Super Dog, Juniper Farms Ice Cream, Max Dawgs, Cookie Monstah, Captain Marden’s Cod Squad, Kona Ice, Daddy’s Fried Dough and Lobsta Love.

Worcester’s own Kona Ice wil l be part of the lineup. Shawn Smith and his wife, Ellen, jumped into the exotically flavored mobile shavedice business a couple of years ago. Smith, who also owns an electrical contracting company, got a little tired waiting for economic recovery to trickle down to the trades and decided to try something new.

“We go to a lot of local concerts, events and fundraisers,” explains Smith. “People want to see more food trucks. They like the convenience, they get what they want and move on.”

Kona Ice is typical of the new wave of food trucks that started on the West Coast and migrated east.

“What we make isn’t your regular snow cone, which, a lot of times is a flavorless ball of ice in a cup,” says Smith. “Our shaved ice is more like snow, and we have the best of the best of flavors.” Those flavors include creamsicle, French vanilla, peach and wedding cake.

And the food trucks that serve main courses have little in common with trucks that serve wrinkled hot dogs plucked from a pot of cloudy water.

“It’s gourmet food on wheels,” says Anne-Marie Aigner, who organized the festival to showcase the trucks.

Aigner says bringing the trucks all together as a festival lets people sample different menus that offer a wide range of foods such lobster bisque, savory and sweet crepes, vegetarian pockets, salads and rice bowls and specialty ice creams and sweets like Kona Ice. Like Smith, Aigner figures the food trucks have caught on because they offer a dining-out experience that’s easy and affordable.

As for the cooks, Aigner says people have embraced the food-truck craze for different reasons. For well-known and well-established restaurants, a food truck is often about mobile marketing.

But for others who dream of owning a restaurant but don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest, a food truck can be an alternative entry point into the business.

For Danbury, N.H., residents Alex and Bob Graf, a food truck was actually a re-entry point. The Grafs had eight years tied up into their inn and German bistro when the recession forced them to shut down. But the Grafs got back up again and launched Schnitzels & Giggles, a food truck that serves German food.

The Grafs have embraced a new lifestyle as food gypsies who travel through the South during the winter and head north when the weather gets warm. At home in New England, they work their way along the busy route of festivals and fairs serving sauerkraut, spätzle, wiener schnitzel, German potato salad and homemade bratwurst that comes either on a roll or on a stick.

“A lot of the trucks serve food on a stick,” says Aigner. “But there’s a lot more. The variety is amazing.”

Fancheezical, Captain Marden’s Cod Squad, Gabi’s Smoke Shack and Bon Me, which specializes in Vietnamese cuisine, are just some of the trucks that will be heading to Worcester to join Kona Ice this Saturday.

Food Truck Festival organizers will be selling blocks of taste tickets in books of 10 tickets for $13, and 20 for $25. Tickets are good at all the trucks at the event. Check out foodtruckfestivalsofne.com for more info.

http://www.worcestermag.com/home/top-stories/Food-truck-festival-162175505.html

Selena Avalon,19, Dudley, looking a bit like a multi-colored Kona Ice herself, enjoys a cone beside the Kona tropical shaved ice truck at the Food Truck Festival at Elm Park. (T&G Staff/JIM COLLINS)

CROWD EATS UP FOOD TRUCK FESTIVAL

The food truck craze finally got cooking in Worcester yesterday with a festival of mobile munchies at Elm Park.

Seventeen food trucks offering a variety gourmet goodies lined up along the Park Avenue side of the park for the first Worcester Food Truck Festival, a tasty gathering which organizers hope will become an annual event.

Park Avenue was closed off between Highland and Elm streets for the festival, which ran from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Trucks that normally ply streets in the Boston area headed west for the event and were greeted by eager tasters who lined up in a steady stream throughout the afternoon.

“We were extremely pleased with the turnout,” said Ann-Marie Aigner, executive producer for Food Truck Festivals of New England. She estimated 7,000 to 8,000 people showed up. “We’re thrilled. The trucks were thrilled. The community really turned out for us.”

One of the biggest draws were the grilled cheese sandwiches, including ones made smokingly different by the addition of ghost chilies, the hottest peppers in the world at the Grilled Cheese Nation truck. Trucks that put a gourmet twist on that comfort-food staple are stalwarts of the food truck trend and the longest lines at the Worcester event were found there. Another offering from that truck was called Blue Man Goo, meltingly made with Great Hill bleu cheese and organic fig spread with aged balsamic on raisin pecan bread.

So far, it seems, the food truck tide has hit everywhere but here, not counting our traditional hot dog and ice cream vendors. “In Boston they’re all over City Hall Plaza,” said Nancy Toohey of Medway, as she waited in a food line as the festival opened today. “It’s a big deal. They make a lot of money. They make good food and you also see them on all the Food Network shows, too. I actually work in Providence and they do it in Providence.”

She said she doesn’t mind standing outside in all kinds of weather just to nab a nosh. “The food truck concept is a completely different way of experiencing food,” she said. “Back in the old days the trucks just came in when you worked at a factory and they were called the ‘yuck trucks’ and that’s not what this is. It’s high quality. It’s different and interesting.”

She came to Worcester to eat at the festival with her daughter, Jenna Toohey, 22, of Westboro. They lined up early at Bon Me, a truck that sells Vietnamese food, including a soba noodle salad with either Chinese barbecue pork, spice rubbed chicken or organic tofu and mushrooms. Nancy Toohey has seen the truck many times outside her office in Boston but has been daunted by long lines. “I’ve always wanted to try it but there’s always a line and I knew I was coming here so I waited,” she said. Her co-workers have given the food rave reviews. “Everyone loves it. Everyone goes whenever it’s out there,” she said.

At Go Fish! summer gazpacho, skillet seared catfish tacos and grilled shrimp burgers were among offerings.

David Stein of Malden, chef and truck owner, said he bought his truck and hit the road about 14 months ago. “I’ve been a chef since the beginning of time but I’m relatively new in the food truck game,” he said.

So why did he go mobile?

“I like the artistic freedom of it,” he said. “I had worked for 10 stifling years in the corporate world and had been downsized when the economy crashed and wanted to do something on my own and I liked the gypsy caravan aspect of the food trucks. The overhead’s lower and there’s lots of creative freedom.”

There also is a lot of creative competition. Stein said he has seen the scene change just in the relatively short time he has been a part of it. “It’s growing hugely,” he said.

And that’s just fine with Lisa Dembek of Baldwinville.

“So far the lines go really fast and the food is really good,” she said. “It’s like what I’ve seen on TV. I’m big on Food Truck Wars so that’s why we wanted to come.”

She had just tried a sandwich from the Bon Me truck: a spiced pork on a hoagie roll with spicy dressing, a pickle, some lettuce and fresh cilantro. She pronounced it “spicy, fresh and delicious.” It was just one stop on an appetite-sating plan of attack that called for working her way down the line of trucks taking a taste from each one.

“We brought Tupperware because we can’t eat it,” she said. “We’re cutting everything in half and bring it home because we want to be able to try everything. That’s the beauty of this.”

http://www.telegram.com/article/20120715/NEWS/307159978/1246