Food Truck Saturday
After taking a couple weeks off during vacation I hit an event I’d been waiting on for a couple of months. The folks who run Rock Hill’s Food Truck Friday rescheduled the July event to coincide with the Saturday opening ceremonies of the BMX World Championships being held right here in Rock Hill, SC.
In addition to the usual area around Fountain Park loaded with food trucks and live music they blocked off a few more streets, doubled the number of food trucks, added a kids ride and bounce area, increased the number and location of tables to sit and dine, had twice the beer tents, another stage with music, and finally an area where they had guys doing bike riding stunts. Whew, that’s a lot of stuff for a Saturday evening.
It was hot. At 6:00pm it was 96 degrees or 36 depending on your flavor of temperature. So naturally my first goal was to secure a beverage from the closest beer station. The beer stations had local craft brews, some not so local craft brews and a couple of national beers. I was trying to decide between a stout and a brown ale which I figured would be lighter on this semi-hellish day. The woman waiting on me said “You want to sample it” when I voiced that thought. It took a second before I realized she wasn’t asking me and she had the tap going before I could respond. As she gave me the cup she told me she and her cohort had just sampled both and I needed to make an informed decision. I was also presented with a sample of the coffee cream stout. Both were actually good but the brown ale was a bit hoppier and more bitter than I was expecting while the stout was smoother and went down well so that’s was the starter beer. First hurdle cleared it was time to examine the food options.
There were a number of taco & sandwich trucks as well as BBQ of different varieties. Ethnically inspired trucks, a couple of seafood trucks and desert trucks with those ice cream & Italian ice doing a brisk business. I settled on Thai meatball sliders with cilantro lime rice from the Plated Palette food truck.
The two beef meatballs were covered with a Thai sweet chile sauce and served with a cucumber slice and spinach on a soft slider bun. They were good but I have to admit they were a tad awkward as they wanted to shoot out of the bun with each bite. The rice seemed light on the lime and just a little better on the cilantro so it turned out to be mostly just rice. I did find a nice place to sit which occasionally got a wind assisted spray from the fountain. A bonus was it was only a short jaunt to the BMX trick area for some after dinner entertainment.
After that it was time to obtain another brew and contemplate dessert possibilities. This time I went the opposite direction of the stout and opted for a Catawba Brewing White Zombie witbier. It was lighter and a little more refreshing than the stout. I found a nice spot with a reasonably regular breeze to nurse my zombie and people watch as I continued to contemplate dessert. This really was a world event as I saw folks from not only USA teams but from Canada, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Australia, South Africa, and from their speech some from eastern Europe. Those were just the ones who advertised their teams so no telling how many other countries were represented. Nice exposure for the local area.
I finally decided on dessert and since it had plunged to 94 degrees by 8:00pm I elected to have a root beer float from Hillbilly Bob’s Homemade Soda.
Here’s what I can tell you about Hillbilly Bob’s root beer float. It is not sugar free, it is quite good and they float a single serve vanilla ice cream cup, Blue Bell in this case, on top of that root beer. Well not the cup, just the ice cream. I didn’t bother to check my blood sugar when I got home because I didn’t want to blow the glucometer. To go with my dessert I was treated to a band of 4 white dudes doing a credible job on a Prince tune.
Despite the heat it was a great evening and even though it won’t be as grand I’m already looking forward to next month’s Food Truck Friday.