Food trucks need to step up their game lest the edibles prepared behind the grill lose out to competitors with flashier paint jobs and more memorable names.

We’re Number Hun!

Are you ready for “an Asian flavor invasion”? It sure beats a British invasion, assuming the latter involves British “food”. But we digress… Attila The HUNgry serves up a ravening horde of fusion foods like their signature Thai PB & J, made with Thai peanut butter and strawberry Sriracha jam. Sounds like that could turn hungry feelings to hangry ones but at least they’ll never run out of Hun puns. Flickr member Mack Male photographed – and possibly pillaged – this aggressively red food truck in Edmonton, Canada, during the summer of 2014.

Spam I Am

Serve canned pork loaf from a mobile platform and price the offerings accordingly? Brilliant! Hey, sushi is sushi, even if it’s Spam Musubi, so get yer wallet out if you wanna chow down. Flickr member Sam Howzit spied the Aloha Plate food truck at Coachella 2014, which is undoubtedly the ideal place to serve sushi made with Spam.

Lucious Speed

According to Flickr member Ezra Wolfe, “Big Lucious belongs to the third-tier syndicate known as the Oryza Kings, where he is a ground-level distributor selling sticky rice directly to the public.” That may or may not be entirely true (though we really, really hope it is), but the copious quilted foil cladding and enormous extractor thingy on the roof indicate the eponymous owner’s definitely cooking up something special inside.

Food Truckin’

If the Grateful Dead had a food truck, it would probably look a lot like this though using a VW Microbus would have completely nailed it. That said, Honest Tom’s Taco Shop’s pushes all the right buttons from the LSD-lightful paint job to a decorated grinning skull right out of Dia de Muertos. Gotta love their menu board too: breakfast tacos and iced coffee are a classic post-hangover meal. Flickr member Ezra Wolfe snapped the flashback-inducing roving roach coach in May of 2010.

Praise Cheeses

You can’t get more understated than the Big Cheese food truck, shown here at PopaPalooza… a convention-style event for the Funko community. Indeed, even Funko fans gotta feed their faces sometime and nothing satisfies like cheese in all its deliciously odoriferous permutations. Yes whey! Those reluctant to accept cheeses as their gustatorial savior can seek solace via the truck’s Nutella with Roasted Banana sandwich. Flickr member justgrimes caught up with the charmingly minimalist food truck in April of 2011.

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Incr Edible 10 Van Tastic Food Trucks

The truck stops here… stops serving, that is, and these closed and abandoned food trucks won’t be serving anything soon unless it’s as scrap metal.

Van Green

Visitors to the promenade and beach at Portobello in Edinburgh, Scotland will likely recall The Little Green Van and may have even enjoyed some of the delicacies sold during business hours. Sadly for Flickr members byronv2 and martin Hartland, however, their visits in November 2014 and October of 2017 (respectively) did not occur at the optimum times, leaving them… green with envy?

Woe Canada

This quintessentially (and apologetically) Canadian food truck is surely courting a parking ticket from Toronto’s notoriously industrious parking patrol. Then again, the disturbingly anthropomorphic illustrations on the side of the Steve’s catering truck – not to mention that horrifyingly hot hotdog dog – just might keep the urban revenuers away ’til the owner can cheese it. Flickr member Daniel Lobo snapped the van-glorious vehicle in July of 2017.

No Perchases

Time was, visitors to the Kingsville Ferry pier could score a meal of delicious deep-fried perch from the cringingly stereotypical O’Ryan’s Fish and Chips food truck. That was then, this is… well, let’s just say “Lake Erie gonna be eerie” and leave it at that.

While Irish fries may be smiling, there’s been no actual frying inside the long-park abandoned food truck for ages. According to photographer and Flickr member stephenweir, the converted step van “is now rusting into oblivion”… or should that be “O’Blivion”?

Pastel Imperfect

“Oh Mandy’s, well you came and you gave without taking”… which might explain why this awesome pale pink food truck is parked in back of a gritty Montreal factory instead of serving pricey gourmet salads to working stiffs and stiffettes. Also, does Barry Manilow know you raid his food truck? You mess with the bull, he honks the horn. Flickr member Coastal Elite captured the forlorn yet still blushingly beautiful food truck in late May of 2017.

Checkered Passed

The paint has faded, the lettering’s been stripped and it’s wonder this weathered old former food truck still has its hubcaps – among other things. We’re not saying Templetown is a bad neighborhood, just that life in Philly isn’t exactly a picnic.

Picnics may be coming back in style, however, as students attending nearby Temple University have been known to eat and drink like, er, university students. Seems like a great location for a food truck… just not THIS food truck. Flickr member Ezra Wolfe snapped the seen-better-days food truck in early January of 2009.

It’s Been A Slice

Flickr member Christine und Hagen Graf don’t state exactly (or even inexactly) where this old abandoned food truck is located but if the Mediterranean-looking landscape and the Euro-look of the van itself are any indication, it may be the south of France. By the way, the much-faded “Pizza au Feu de Bois” legend on the truck’s side translates to “Wood Oven Pizza” so you’ll know what you’ve been missing.

Just Desserts

It’s not too late to jump aboard the booming food truck bandwagon, you just need the right food and, of course, the right truck… like this one. Better yet, it just happens to be For Sale according to photographer and Flickr member Paul Sableman, who captured the slightly worse-for-wear step van in July of 2013. OK, yeah, that was over six years ago but what are the odds the snow white van’s still parked out there in Austin, baking away in the Texas sun? Sometimes, “hot” deals DO last this long.

Drive around any mid-size to large city and you’re destined to find a number of food trucks. In recent years they’ve become almost as ubiquitous as traditional stationary restaurants. A truck called GhostFood is throwing a very unusual hat into the ring by offering their customers not real food, but the experience of food.

GhostFood, a “participatory performance” from Miriam Simun and Miriam Songster (yup, a double-Miriam team) is meant to simulate the experience of eating foods that could soon be extinct. A 3D printed headpiece attaches to a visitor’s face just like glasses and replicates the olfactory profile of certain foods. A substitute edible substance with a texture identical to the “ghost food” is provided. The scent and texture combined trick the mind into believing that the actual food is being consumed.

The project is meant to increase awareness of the possible future of food. The GhostFood truck will serve up the experiences of eating cod eggs, peanut butter, and chocolate – all of which face the possibility of disappearance due to climate change. In the case of cod eggs, changing seawater salinity is increasingly causing them to sink rather than float, making them both inaccessible to humans and unable to hatch and form the next generation of cod.

Peanuts are affected in multiple ways by climate change. Drier growing periods mean that it’s more difficult to harvest the peanuts, and shortened winters cause a mold called aflatoxin. The mold doesn’t actually harm the peanuts themselves, but it is toxic to humans. Chocolate is in a delicate situation thanks to drought, deforestation, and changing global temperatures. Although the artists are drawing attention to the unstable futures of these foods, they aren’t trying to educate or preach a certain ideology. Their goal is simply to demonstrate what our eating experiences might be like in the future when our favorite foods are no longer available on supermarket shelves.

(via: Edible Geography)