Philly Vendy Awards 2012

This past Saturday, July 28th, the 2nd annual Vendy Awards rolled into Philadelphia's University City section to honor the best in mobile cuisine while supporting the Food Trust (who run all the great Farmer's Markets in the city as well as the Night Markets). For those of you who don't know, the Vendy Awards were started back in 2005 by the Street Vendor Project in New York City as a way to appreciate some of the 20,000 vendors who pour your coffee, sling your hash and squirt mustard on your dirty water dogs on a daily basis. The awards have now moved on to Philly and Los Angeles where the popularity of food trucks is rapidly increasing. 


This year's finalists were comprised of 8 regular food trucks competing for People's Choice, 4 dessert trucks competing for Best Dessert, and all participants competing for the grand prize - The Vendy Cup! 

BYOF: Bring your own fork 

Once inside the lot, we bee-lined for Little Baby's Ice Cream, as we figured most people would save the dessert stuff for last. Little Baby's has delicious, handmade ice cream in a variety of fun flavors from Bourbon Bourbon Vanilla to Early Grey Sriracha. Currently they've been scooping out around town on these awesome little tricycle carts, but they are opening their "World Headquarters" Friday, August 3rd at 2311 Frankford Avenue in Fishtown. 

Their logo is totes adorbs!

Red Velvet Spodee Chocolate swirl. It had little bit of red velvet cake mixed in and was surprisingly delicious, even though I'm not a big red velvet fan.

Next, we headed for Tacos Don Memo, which already had a rapidly growing line. I'd never been to Tacos Don Memo before because they're usually set up in University City during the day so it's too hard to get out there. I love mexican food though, so this was clearly already the winner in my mind.

They were serving up carnitas tacos and chicken burritos, some of the best I've tasted in a long time. And their sauces were super tasty! 

We followed up tacos with more dessert: flavored pops courtesy of Lil Pop Shop. These ain't the pops you remember as a kid! They have an awesome variety of flavors like Goat cheese & fig and Vietnamese Iced Coffee (my fav!).

In addition to their cart, they also have a storefront in West Philly.

Next, we hopped on line for the Smoke Truck, which was also starting to draw a big crowd as they were serving up BBQ pulled pork and some savory mac & cheese. 

 

 I could have eaten this all day!

Right next door was the Vernalicious truck. I've always seen them around but never got a chance to sample their stuff before. However, grand testimonials have been made among many Philadelphians declaring their pulled pork grilled cheese as a gift from the Heavens.But they were also serving up a tomato & mozzarella sammich that I was very excited about.

 

 

 

adorable froggies! 

 

Tomato Mozz Pesto on left, Pulled Pork Grilled cheese on right

 

 

We'd made it to about the halfway mark and I was feeling pretty full now. I was determined to at least try a bite from every truck. Could I make it to all the stops? We moved on to the Delicias truck, who had a pretty slim menu for the day. They are another University City truck that I'd never been to before and was interested to try their arepas. 

 

I'd never had an arepa before so I'm not sure what it was supposed to taste like, but I didn't really like it. While the pork loin was tender, it was didn't do anything for me. And the arepa was dry, topped with black beans and kind of flavorless.

Following that, we checked out the macrons at Sugar Philly. 

They had ice cream ones! Like little mini ice cream sandwiches. Way cool. 

 

Rounding the final stretch was the Foo Truck, another truck I had been wanting to check out. On the menu today was a braised meatball "foowich" and Thai curry quinoa "foowich".

Thai Curry Quinoa on the left; braised meatball on the right

I tried the Quinoa first because I like quinoa salads, but sorry, I did not like this sandwich. The taste and the texture just did not work for me. I also took a nibble of the meatball one which was ok; it probably would have been better if I didn't already feel like I was going to explode. 

Sweet Box Philly was out of all the really good cupcakes by the time we got there, plus I just couldn't fit any more food in me. I waived the white flag at this point and in doing so, also missed out on Yumtown Truck, Lil Dan's and King of Falafel. (I'm sure I'll catch them around town)

Finally, the awards ceremony! Drumroll, please....

And the winners were: 

People's Choice - VERNALICIOUS!

Best Dessert: Lil Pop Shop (yay, I voted for them!)

And the Vendy Cup goes to: SMOKE TRUCK! 

photo courtesy of http://www.bridgesburgersbeer.com

And for my final course of the day:

Mmm! Indigestion!

I'm looking forward to doing this all over again on September 15th when NYC holds their 8th annual Vendy Awards. So stay tuned for future coverage!

Comida!

Back in the day, I used to run a little blog called "Mexican Fridays", where, you guessed it - we would choose a different Mexican restaurant every Friday to eat at. I use the term "eat" very loosely as it was mostly us sharing a pitcher of margaritas and drunkenly shoving some chips and/or fajitas into our faces. It was kind of a short lived thing because we usually got too tanked to remember what we ate and my waistline started rapidly expanding from the all the empty calories. 

Mexican food is definitely one of my favorite kinds of food - and when I say Mexican food, know that I'm referring to the Tex-Mex, Americanized version of the cuisine that most of us have come to know as "Mexican". Don't be a total snob about it and say "Oh well, that's not real Mexican food!" I grew up in an area that was very heavily populated by Mexican immigrants, so I've been to my fair share of hole in the wall taquerias, but obviously, that good ol' Americanized stuff is what's more readily available. 


A lot of places are trying to incorporate finer cuisine into their Mexican-style menus, and there's no greater sign of this then in the Philadelphia area. From El Vez to Distrito to La Calaca Feliz, there are nopales salads, duck confit nachos, hamachi ceviches and pulpo tacos side by side with jumbo margaritas and bowls of fresh guacamole topped with lump crab meat. But the thing that really gets on my nerves the most is that they've all appropriated the same aspects of Mexican culture into the decor: the bright colored roses, the skeletons, the low rider bikes, the Luchadores. So every place has become a carbon copy of the other because someone said "Hey, I like this! People here like this! Let's do the same thing at our place!" 

 El Rey's skirt steak sopes: pretty and delicious

Can we maybe tone it down a bit? Yeah, the Day of the Dead festival is awesome but maybe we do it for a day or a week in the fall? I'd like to walk into a mexican restaurant and actually see a Mexican flag, maybe some paintings on the walls of Aztec ruins, even some cheesy mariachi guys with a horn player strumming "La Cucaracha". Something that actually feels like a little, roadside cantina in Tijuana. Anything but these overkill, super-hipster neon Mexican places adorning Center City. 

Exhibit A from one of the biggest offenders

On the opposite end of this spectrum, one of the better mexican places I've eaten at here in Philly is Mexican Post (Love Park/Cherry St location). The decor inside is so minimal, you might forget that you're even eating in a mexican restaurant, but the food is pretty great. On my most recent visit, I got a chicken chimichanga that was ridiculously good; covered in sauce, slathered in cheese with a side of rice and beans.

Look at that bad boy! 

Who needs Kobe beef tacos with truffle oil infused avocado reduction sauce when you're getting a delicious version of something that's standard? Plus, something like this takes the guesswork out of paying $15 for something you're not sure you're going to like and that probably won't even fill you up. Mexican food isn't meant to be fancy and overpriced; it's meant to be comfort food, to taste good, fill you up, and want you coming back for more. And I definitely plan on visiting Mexican Post again whenever the mood strikes.