An Abject Existence

Lately, life has furnished me with a rather abject existence. Without any culinary compatriot by my side, I’ve found myself free to chase whatever culinary novelty without the slightest inconvenience. And the city’s only policed food truck has occupied me with a fun game of cat and mouse that no doubt those with work will find very inconvenient, especially when the city dictates when and where a food truck will go. Certainly, these particular dynamics make the food truck a frivolous venture unless eaters are free and enthusiastic enough to chase them down, especially if trucks are prevented to really go where the mouths are. The Schmuck Truck seems to be the city’s harebrained pilot project, testing to see if food trucks can be a viable business in our mid-sized city. Good for us, I suppose; especially good for the Schmuck Truck, privileged to monopolize, for now, on what seems to be a cosmopolitan trend. But I’m not losing any truck with the city’s culinary social experiments, finding it preoccupied my time for at least a day. I hope customers don’t have to compromise their location for it, or any food trucks in the future; otherwise, they’ll all run out of gas. But that’s enough of my lazy vehicular puns. Yes, the Schmuck Truck is a novelty for everyone obsessed with purchasing experience and consuming it through travel; but it also offers us what it considers gourmet options worthwhile of the chase, introducing different specialties as much as it can, and wants. That said, its changing menu is small, so that already gets a gold star from me; and its effort at gourmandizing food in a truck is reason for interest. Whether it succeeds or not is the other issue.

There’s typical salt of the earth fare: French fries, hamburgers, pulled pork sandwiches, elevated with creative haute cuisine combinations. I appreciate it all. I wouldn’t expect any less from a food truck. And I wouldn’t expect not to pay a marginally similar price to fixed restaurants. We can dream about the food truck bringing us cheaper meals with all the same pizzazz, but even the streets are rented.

And, of course, as challenging as my taste buds are, I opted for the most lofty entrees. A shrimp remoulade rice bowl: a kind of cold rice noodle salad with a peppery, tomato mayonnaise sauce, shrimp, coriander, and a smattering of lazily chopped vegetables; and an artichoke and spinach grilled cheese sandwich, packed with chopped artichoke, cream cheese, asiago cheese and mozzarella.

All in all, burgers and fries may have been better. Gourmandizing, at least for the items I got, seemed too challenging given the space they were made in (I assume, anyway). The remoulade in my bowl was flat and sour, and there was no cilantro to be found. I would have liked the usual uplifting Asian flavours that the dish attempted to mimic; things like lime juice, lemon grass, and of course, cilantro. It was an unfortunate combination which’s simulacrum just didn’t work. The rice noodles, purposely served cold, were unfortunately subject to being droughty and hardened. Some call this al dente; a stranger called it undercooked. It may work for pasta, but years in a Thai kitchen taught me if rice noodles are cooked and refrigerated they need to be blanched and cooled again if eaten cold because they dry out. The shrimp however, was the savoury savior of the dish- tender and adding flavor to an otherwise bland and sour dish. Micro sprouts added a great fresh earthiness, but weren’t enough to really draw attention away from what was wrong.

Our grilled cheese, sandwiched with rye, had me looking at it leerily. A deep brown had me wondering if the bread was burnt; but the forgivingness of rye absolved any suspicion. My qualm, and the stranger’s I shared it with, was that everything was overpowered with nothing but cream cheese, which was a crying shame, because there were a lot of great ingredients to be showcased.

Luckily, the Schmuck Truck is a fluid thing, and an option can be here today and gone tomorrow, so too can defective meal options. So if you find yourself on the verge of an abject existence, even if for a day, for the sake of novelty why not try and track it down? You never know, our dear city may never see another food truck again.

CASH ONLY

FOR DIRECTIONS AND TIMES CHECK ITS TWITTER: @SchmuckTruck1

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