FOOD
Festival attendees enjoy the fare at last year’s Food Truck A Palooza. Photo courtesy of GoodTaste! Pittsburgh (Photo: Ed Marshall)
FESTIVAL FOOD
INDOOR FOOD TRUCK FESTIVAL RETURNS FOR THIRD YEAR BY HALEY FREDERICK - PITTSBURGH CURRENT STAFF WRITER HALEY@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
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t’s officially March and snow is still falling in and out of the forecast. We’re all beyond being sick of the slush by now and itching to get back to some of our favorite warmerweather activities, like going to food trucks. Remember food trucks? Winter just isn’t their season. Dee Weinberg knows the feeling and she’s here to bring a food truck oasis to a desolate, wintry Pittsburgh. For the third year running, Weinberg’s event company, GoodTaste! Pittsburgh, is putting on its Food Truck A Palooza indoors at the Monroeville Convention Center. This year’s lineup features 39 different food trucks.
“The first year, I believe we had 28 trucks,” she says. “The second we had 32, so it has grown and we are at full capacity right now.” The growth of Food Truck A Palooza and it’s success—more than 3,000 people attended the event last year—are a direct reflection of the food truck’s continuing rise in popularity. It’s thought that the impetus for the initial boom in the United State’s food truck industry was the 2008 recession. In a time of widespread financial struggle, the food truck emerged as a lower-cost, lower-risk way to enter the food industry. And while they were once seen as a step on the path to opening a brick-
26 | MAR. 5, 2019 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
and-mortar restaurant, today food trucks are seen as legitimate culinary ventures in and of themselves. “People in this area love food trucks, and as the list of food trucks grows, the list of people who love them grows,” Weinberg says. It’s true. It seems that for consumers, the novelty of food trucks hasn’t worn off. Why? Perhaps there’s something serendipitous about them. It’s exciting to happen upon something new and unexpected. A new restaurant is exciting. A food truck is essentially a new restaurant in every place that it pulls over and pops open the service window. Then, once you happen upon
a food truck that you love, you get to follow it. When it comes to your neck of the woods it’s a special occasion—you just have to go get some. Following your favorite food truck’s whereabouts is like your favorite band being on tour. When they announce they’re coming to your town, how could you possibly not go? Food Truck A Palooza, then, presents the perfect opportunity for food-lovers to discover the truck they’ll be stalking this spring and summer. It’s the only indoor food truck festival in western Pennsylvania. That could be because of the practical challenges that an