Listen: I have no problem with food trucks. I have been eating food off trucks and street carts since I was young enough to wear saddle shoes and short pants. It’s even accurate to say that I love food trucks — and not just for the food, which often ventures into the type of culinary topography I love to explore and is almost always affordable, but also for the concept, which allows operators to take their restaurants to where the hungry people are.

I visit my neighborhood taco truck as often as circumstances allow. And I will throw out a standing offer to any food truck in Greensboro: Come park in the Nussbaum Center parking lot on Tuesdays while we are on deadline and it should be worth your while.

But don’t ask me to go to a food-truck rodeo. Just don’t.

Because the food-truck rodeo as it’s practiced here in the Triad is perhaps the worst setting to enjoy the wonderful bounty available from the windows of our corps of mobile chefs.

You know why: The crowds, which force wait times for food that rivals even the least organized of brick-and-mortar restaurants. The menus, which for large festivals lean towards more pedestrian items that can be bought, stored and assembled on the fly. The people, who sometimes act as if they’ve never seen a goddamn crepe before.

So I will pass on your food-truck rodeo, thank you. Unless, that is, the trucks themselves compete against each other in some sort of, you know, rodeo. Until then, I’ll be at the taco truck in my neighborhood.

Join the First Amendment Society, a membership that goes directly to funding TCB‘s newsroom.

We believe that reporting can save the world.

The TCB First Amendment Society recognizes the vital role of a free, unfettered press with a bundling of local experiences designed to build community, and unique engagements with our newsroom that will help you understand, and shape, local journalism’s critical role in uplifting the people in our cities.

All revenue goes directly into the newsroom as reporters’ salaries and freelance commissions.

⚡ Join The Society ⚡