Jeremiah Jackson’s Farm to Fender food truck will stick to the south side of Asheville. The food truck will have a mural of food, from the seed to the plate, painted by artist Jason Brake. / special to Asheville Scene

 Jeremiah Jackson is sick of restaurant kitchens.

That’s why he’s cramming himself into the diminutive galley of the former Our Taco Truck food truck. With a coat of green paint covering the former bright pink, the truck has been rechristened Farm to Fender.

Jackson this weekend hosted a soft opening for Farm to Fender in south Asheville.

His menu includes a full-scale breakfast, complete with gluten-free waffles and build-your-own omelets, stuffed with house-smoked shrimp or salmon and various veggies. Lunch items include a Southwest spinach salad with queso fresco and a number of taco offerings, grouped under the heading “of course we have tacos.”

“We specialize in fresh, local-when-possible, healthy breakfast and lunch with specials that are Southern favorites that really stick to your bones,” Jackson said, adding that vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options are abundant on the menu.

Jackson graduated from Johnson and Wales University in Charleston, SC, in 2003. He has worked as the executive chef of both Poogan’s Porch in Charleston and Good Food Catering, part of the Holy City Hospitality Group, which also manages Virginia’s on King, also in Charleston. After a stint cooking in New Zealand, another in the corporate world and another catering to the corporate world, he (and his wife) decided it was high time Jackson got his own kitchen.

“And we decided a food truck would make more sense, since we don’t have the money for a restaurant,” he said.

What’s in the name? Jackson has a heck of an elevator pitch.

“We trying to cater to folks who focus on being healthy and sustainable at the same time,” he said. “The theory is that, the better we treat our planet, the community and the folks around us, the longer we’re going to be here. The longer we’re going to be here, the more we’re going to eat, and the more we’re going to eat, the more we get to cook. I love to cook, so I need to do everything in my power to spread that sustainability.”

Farm to Fender will start serving food Tuesday, May 14, at 960 Sweeten Creek Rd. from 7 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Visit twitter.com/farmtofender or http://simplydonecuisine.com for more.

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20130429/ASHEVILLESCENE/304290046/New-food-truck-hits-Asheville-s-south-side

Trevon Dunn of the Bom Bus

The Bom Bus is a new food truck looking to bring Portuguese food to the streets of Asheville.

Here’s more about that.

The owner of the restaurant on wheels, Trevon Dunn,  is waiting for a number of stars to align before officially setting up shop.

An increase in the number of downtown permits for food trucks would be nice, and that seems to be moving along.

There’s a meeting at City Hall at 9 a.m. next Wednesday (April 24) to continue the discussion. Currently permitting is limited to 10 trucks, though city officials may grant more. Click the link above for more about that.

Also waiting for a downtown permit is Smash Box, whose owners say they’re next on the waiting list. “We’re number 11,” says co-owner Ashley Teran (her husband, Nestor Teran, is the chef).

Smash Box serves Nicaraguan food, all served in more street food format. Expect to find marinated churrasco steak (basically skirt steak) wrapped in a flour tortilla with red refried beans, jalapeno crema and a version of slaw and fried plantain chips on the side.

Soon, the truck will venture into Nicaraguan breakfast: rice and beans, a fried egg, hot sauce and queso frito, griddled until it has crisp outer edges.

We’ll profile Smash Box in next week’s Scene as part of our All Go West coverage. Look for more there (or go see Smash Box tonight at the Odditorium, 1045 Haywood Road).

http://blogs2.citizen-times.com/eatscene/2013/04/17/food-trucks-ahoy-bom-bus-brings-the-portuguese-smash-box-makes-with-the-nicaraguan-food/

Donwon Lee and his wife, Miok Chung Lee, prepare lunch from their food truck, El Kimchi, on Coxe Avenue. Food trucks, just as with brick-and-mortar restaurants, are required to have a manager on site who is trained in food safety. / John Fletcher/jfletcher@citizen-times.com

At my house, we celebrated the first day of spring by watching snow pour down in buckets.

For a good 15 minutes. Sadly, it was the best snow we’ve had all winter, and it wasn’t even winter.

Obviously, you can’t explain spring weather. But I vow to do my best with your burning questions, my smart-aleck responses and the real deal.

Keep those questions coming, folks. Let’s proceed.

Question: I was recently subpoenaed to give a deposition in Asheville concerning out-of-state civil litigation. Prior to being deposed, the stenographer had me raise my right hand and swear on a Bible to tell the whole truth, etc. When questioned about this, she said N.C. law requires this oath to be sworn on a Bible. Both out-of-state attorneys present said they never heard of such a thing and that federal court practice forbids making people swear on a Bible.

On examining the ancient Bible I was given to swear upon, I discovered it wasn’t in English. The stenographer said she believed it to be in German. Since I’m a fluent speaker, I assured her it wasn’t but that it was written in one of the Scandinavian languages. My question: Was the stenographer correct that state law requires someone who testifies in a court proceeding to swear on a Bible, in English or any language? If so, is this something the ever-vigilant ACLU needs to pursue?

My answer: I don’t know about you, but nothing screams, “I’m telling the truth here!” more than swearing on a Scandinavian holy book you’re pretty sure is from a religion you don’t subscribe to.

Real answer: Buncombe County Clerk of Court Steve Cogburn, who’s been practicing law for 25 years, stressed that his office does not dictate these rules but noted he is familiar with the swearing-in process.

“If you give testimony in a court proceeding, you are asked to give an oath or an affirmation,” Cogburn said. “The affirmation is that your testimony will be the truth and nothing but truth, but it does not involve the Bible.”

At the courthouse, they keep on hand numerous holy books to accommodate various religions, so witnesses or others involved in legal proceedings can give an affirmation on the Torah or the Koran or other holy tome. They can also opt to involve no holy book and simply raise their right hand and affirm that they will tell the truth.

Cogburn also offered an interesting little bit of trivia.

“The reason you raise your right hand is that they used to mark felons on their right hand with an ‘F,’” Cogburn said. “I guess once they saw the ‘F’ it would be up to them whether or not that person was capable of giving a solemn oath and telling the truth.”

Question: With this new rule in food service in 2014, will the food trucks have to pass the course Managers ServSafe? I was told by the Health Department that all food service eateries must have one person on premises with the certificate while they are open.

My answer: I pondered this the other day when I bought an “exhaust-blackened tuna filet wrap” at the “Something’s Fishy” food truck.

Real answer: Marc Fowler, environmental health director at the Buncombe County Department of Health, took this one on.

“Mobile food trucks are required to have a manager present that is trained in basic food safety through ServSafe or an equivalent course, just as a restaurant does,” Fowler said. “Enforcement of this rule through loss of points in an inspection will begin in January 2014 for both mobile food units and restaurants.”

Question: How often are road bridges inspected, and do they take a special look at them after heavy rain and flood events?

My answer: I suspect it’s always special when you’re looking at a bridge that’s collapsed into a river.

Real answer: “All the bridges on the state highway system are inspected on a biannual basis,” said Ed Green, division maintenance engineer with the Asheville office of the N.C. Department of Transportation. “We have an independent group which is responsible for this task and they provide a complete inspection report for each bridge every two years. Additionally, if there is suspected damage to a bridge due to an accident or weather-related event, we can request a special inspection, which we routinely utilize.”

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20130325/COLUMNISTS09/303250016/Answer-Man-delves-into-oaths-food-trucks

Exterior of the Masonic Lodge in Asheville. / John Fletcher

The Asheville Masonic Temple will ask for city permission to allow two food trucks to operate in its parking lot, officials said this morning.

If approved, the location would be the second where food trucks are allowed downtown.

The first, known simply as The Lot, opened one year ago this Saturday.

Much has changed since then, and the number of food trucks has increased.

Ten food trucks are currently trying to squeeze into only four spaces. Asheville’s Downtown Commission will meet at 8:30 a.m. Friday to consider increasing the number of food trucks permits allotted downtown.

The food truck proposal is the latest effort by the Masonic Temple to open the building to the public, new facilities director Ferris Camp said.

The trucks would be allowed to operate at the site as much as they’d like, Camp said.

“Five days a week, seven days a week … nine days a week,” he joked. “I don’t want to walk so far to get my lunch every day.”

Food truck operators will have to draw up a site plan for the new lot. They’ll enlist the help of former food truck owner Marni Graves, who recently returned to her career in architecture.

Graves and the food truck owners, with the help of Temple authorities, will determine how to provide electrical outlets for the trucks. Since the Masonic lodge wants to provide table seating and bathrooms, it will have to be inspected by the city as well.

Camp said he also thinks the parking lot will be ideal for a new farmers market — one that sells only non-genetically modified food items, which he hopes would be a great resource for downtown chefs.

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013302260036

Craig Hoge proudly mans his bright-yellow bread truck, which is decked out with pictures of anthropomorphic sausages and tiny hearts. It’s an eye-catching homage to “anything meaty, tasty and juicy,” as he describes the products he will serve from the Lovin’ Tenders food truck, which opens this week on Haywood Road at the intersection with Louisiana Avenue (across from Ingles).

A selection of chicken, pork and steak tenders in different styles will issue from the carry-away window. Get them battered and fried or grilled on Hoge’s 6-foot char-broil grill. They come in three, five, 10 and 20-piece boxes to suit the peckish, hungry and famished, alike.

“I’m mainly going for street food,” Hoge says. “The street-food culture is one of the biggest, growing markets in the food business.” Accordingly, he’ll also offer sausages: bratwurst and weisswurst.

Sides include German potato salad, curly sweet-potato fries and grilled vegetable sticks. Lovin’ Tenders also does dessert, including Frushi, Hoge’s personal creation that combines coconut sticky rice in and fruit in a soy wrapper. “It’s this wonderful-looking dessert that looks like sushi, but it’s not,” he says. “It’s something that I made up.”

For the specials, he has more elaborate plans. He’s starting out with a London broil and bearnaise sauce dish, and he hopes to include seitan, goat, alligator, bison, lamb and even soft-shell crab in that rotation.

All and all, Lovin’ Tenders serves an idiosyncratic mash-up of global cuisines and novelty meats.

While Hoge is opening this week in West Asheville, he’ll soon have a presence at The Lot on Coxe on Saturdays. The city allows 10 food trucks to operate out of that parking lot, which was at capacity until recently. Lovin’ Tenders will take the place of Our Taco Truck. Hoge also plans to visit festivals. “I don’t want a real restaurant — or, this is a real restaurant; it’s just on wheels,” he says. “It’s a little more fun when you can move your venue and participate in all kinds of different fun festivals.”

Hoge came to Asheville three years ago from Memphis, Tenn., where he owned an eatery called Great Lil’ Place, and, before that, worked as food and beverage manager at The Memphis Zoo and Mud Island River Park.

For more information about Lovin’ Tenders, visit http://www.lovintenders.com or check out the Facebook page.

http://www.mountainx.com/article/48000/Lovin-Tenders-food-truck-opens-this-week-on-Haywood-Road

Jerad Rast and Barbara Carpenter wait for their orders as Ashton Ratzlaff serves lunch to customers at the Melt Your Heart Gourmet Grilled Cheese food truck on Coxe Avenue in Asheville. The debate over food trucks picked up again as city officials look at whether the trucks should be allowed in Biltmore Village. / John Fletcher/Jfletcher@citizen-times.com

 ASHEVILLE — The debate over food trucks apparently isn’t over.

Instead, it has shifted to Biltmore Village, where concerns from some businesses about a coffee truck prompted the city to look into whether the trucks should be allowed in the historic area.

The city’s Historic Resources Commission voted Wednesday to recommend allowing food trucks in Biltmore Village, but with some restrictions, similar to requirements for downtown food trucks.

The recommendation is not binding, and the commission split 5-4 on the issue with one member abstaining.

“It’s not that I don’t believe in food trucks. I’ve been to Izzy’s in Biltmore Village, and I think it’s wonderful. But as a historian, as someone who is trying to uphold guidelines of a historic nature for the district, I don’t believe that food trucks have a place there in the current situation,” commission member Ashley Black said.

The recommendation now goes to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, which could make a recommendation to City Council.

The city for years banned food trucks downtown. But after plenty of heated debate that pitted restaurant owners against the food trucks, City Council agreed last year to allow the trucks with restrictions.

The Biltmore Village concerns emerged as the city was doing its one-year review of the ordinance allowing the food trucks downtown, said Alan Glines, city urban planner.

“It became an opportunity to review all the issues, and it was timely to bring it back here (to the Historic Resources Commission),” he said.

Izzy’s coffee truck sparked the discussion after getting a permit to set up in a parking lot in Biltmore Village.

Jeremy Hargroves, who operates the truck, said he went to business owners about his plan to set up two or three days a week in the afternoons.

“I didn’t feel like anybody came up to me and said ‘Hey, we have some issues with mobile food trucks being here’,” Hargroves said.

The only other coffee shop in Biltmore Village is a Starbucks.

“I’m sure we’re not even a blip on their radar,” Hargroves said.

But the truck prompted a request from some Biltmore Village business owners for the city to change the zoning regulations to either prohibit or restrict the trucks in Biltmore Village, city officials say.

The city is home to about 40 trucks. The downtown district is limited to 10 trucks, and unlike other areas, downtown trucks are regulated as a permanent use. Operators can’t use generators, and they must some have some basic facilities, such as sidewalks, Glines said.

Food trucks are only allowed in commercially zoned areas.

Biltmore Village is one of four local historic districts, but the other three are primarily residential.

Stan Collins, owner of the Once Upon a Time children’s book and toy store, said he believes the food truck doesn’t fit with the historic nature of Biltmore Village.

“An area like Biltmore Village or any other historic area, there’s a certain image that goes with that, and I think what we’re talking about, I don’t think fits in with that image,” Collins said.

“People come in here from everywhere, and they love it because it’s an old historic area,” Collins said. “It’s an environment, and a truck in a parking lot selling food is really sort of counter to that concept.”

The commission reviewed three options, including banning all food trucks from Biltmore Village except for special events, a move recommended by staff.

Biltmore Village has particular guidelines for the historic district, said Stacy Merten, the city’s director of historic resources.

“Biltmore Village is a very unique place,” Merten said.

But several people who work in Biltmore Village said in interviews they like having the truck there.

“Where else do you get coffee? It (the truck) is really very nice. It’s not tacky,” said Jean Brown, who works at William & Grace, where the truck parks a few days a week.

Brown said she’s heard no complaints about the truck.

“If you are going to complain about that, you have to complain about every other truck that pulls into Biltmore Village,” Brown said.

Hargroves said, “The only complaint I’ve heard is when we’re not there.”

Eli Masem, who owns the coffee truck Ursa Minor Coffee, said he can’t understand “why it’s such a huge issue.”

“I can’t imagine why that would be a problem there,” Masem said. “These guys have done all their due diligence. They have permission to be there.”

Bringing food trucks to downtown hasn’t created the problems some had predicted, according to Suzy Phillips, owner of Gypsy Queen Cuisine, who spearheaded efforts to bring food trucks downtown.

“The people of Asheville love us, love the food we are putting out,” she said.

 http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20121115/NEWS/311150026/History-collides-food-trucks-Biltmore-Village?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage&gcheck=1&nclick_check=1

Nate Kelly with wife Cynthia and son Hobbs in front of the Lowdown food truck. / Robert Bradley/Asheville Citizen-Times

Food truck owner talks pimento cheese and the mobile-food biz

Leave it to the birth of a baby to change everything.

Nate Kelly was once the manager of the now-closed Usual Suspects on Merrimon Avenue, heading up catering gigs and making sure that the food flowed out of the kitchen for eight years. But when Kelly found out that his wife, Cynthia, was pregnant with their first child, he handled the announcement with his characteristic calm.

“I kind of freaked out,” he said, laughing. “I figured that I needed to get a regular job — a ‘real job.’ So I went to nursing school for a year. Now I have a lot of respect for nurses. I don’t know how they do it; it wasn’t for me.”

Kelly soon started following the food truck debate in Asheville, attending meetings at City Hall in support of the vendors who hoped to be allowed to sell food from their trucks downtown. (After many meetings and a vote from City Council in late 2011, up to 10 trucks a year can acquire downtown permits annually).

Despite the hurdles — expensive equipment, long hours and resistance from some downtown property owners, to name a few — Kelly decided to dive into the food truck business, purchasing a truck already furnished with kitchen equipment from a retired couple in South Carolina.

“I thought it would be a nice family business, maybe something I could pass along to my son,” said Kelly

He painted the vehicle, named it the Lowdown food truck and got to work selling a menu with items like smoked-pork barbecue sandwiches piled with pickled okra and slaw or a simple pesto grilled cheese.

Kelly’s son, Hobbs, now 2, loves climbing in the truck and says his favorite food is sandwiches — he seems like the ideal candidate to follow in his dad’s footsteps.

But Kelly says that running a food truck isn’t the easiest business. “I talk to a lot of people who want to get into it,” he said. “It really is a full-time job. … It’s not something that you just do occasionally. If you’re not working on the truck, you’re prepping for the truck. If you’re not doing that, you’re returning emails or applying to festivals, meeting with health inspectors or food purveyors. It’s a 50- to 60-hour-a-week gig.”

When he’s not selling sandwiches from his food truck, Kelly’s working to change the perception of them as a whole. “It’s getting people over the fear of food trucks,” he said. “There’s a lot of negative thought about food trucks, so it’s important to try to get the word out and educate people that quality food can come out of the truck.”

One of the dishes that Kelly said works for a crowd — for football Sundays, in particular — is his smoky pimento cheese, which works as well with a hunk of crusty bread as it does grilled on a sandwich. For his part, Kelly smears it on BLTs (to make BLTPs, naturally).

“I’ve definitely done pimento cheese in every restaurant that I’ve worked at,” he said. “I wanted to incorporate it into the menu somehow with the truck. I love BLTs, and I thought, why not make a BLT with pimento cheese?”

With that brilliant question, a hit was born. “It’s turned out to be one of my most popular sandwiches,” Kelly said.

Pimento cheese is a quintessentially Southern dip that boasts a wide reach throughout Asheville — you can find it in the most casual of places and even at some of our finer establishments. It’s often easy to forget that it’s as foreign to some Northern palates as scrapple.

“You don’t realize how many people come to our truck and are like, ‘What is pimento cheese?’ ” Kelly said.

Nate’s smoky pimento cheese

1 pound of sharp cheddar, grated
2 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced jalapenos
2-3 tablespoons of mayo
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
8 ounces pimentos from a can or chopped roasted red peppers

Mix together and enjoy cold with bread as a side, smeared on a sandwich or melted over crostini.

Makes enough to serve a small party.

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20121027/HOMEGARDEN/310270020/In-kitchen-Asheville-s-Nate-Kelly-keeps-trucking?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CEntertainment%7Cs&nclick_check=1