Vancouver Street Food Festival offers a world of eats

Community Pizzeria will also be one of several food trucks at the Fringe Festival

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      Although Sarah Fenton cringes at the word foodie, she says there’s no denying she and her partner, Michael Paul, are food lovers. While living in Squamish, the two toyed with the idea of opening a restaurant, but with zero experience in the field, that seemed like a daunting prospect.

      Instead, after Paul travelled to Naples to learn how to make authentic Neapolitan from the masters at the True Neapolitan Pizza Association (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana)—the governing body of the country’s famous staple—the two moved to Vancouver, teamed up with partner Daisuke Nakai, bought a 1996 Grumman van, outfitted it with a kitchen that includes a wood-fire pizza oven, and then turned the key on the bright-red-and-dark-blue Community Pizzeria food truck.

      That was four years ago. Although running a mobile eatery that involves rolling out dough for anywhere from 100 to 400 margherita, calabrese, and prosciutto-and-arugula pizzas a day and making sauces from scratch has proven to be labour-intensive, Fenton says it has been a fun ride.

      “It’s a shocking amount of work,” says Fenton, who notes that the oven gets fired up about an hour before service so that the birch-, maple-, or alder-fuelled unit reaches the 900 ° F required to cook pizza in 90 seconds. “The amount of labour is incredible…but it’s a labour of love.

      “Because you’re travelling everywhere all the time, you get to be a part of cool events and festivals,” she adds. “We love food, and we love being a part of a community. That is a big thing for us; we’re getting to know a ton of people, and it’s a really great community.”

      For the operators, there are a lot of advantages to starting a food truck compared to a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, as Fenton and Paul have found. It gives those considering entering the industry a chance to test the waters and is typically more affordable than leasing or buying and renovating a building space.

      Then there is their appeal to food lovers: you’ve got your pick of items ranging from lumpia spring rolls (Fliptop Filipino Fusion) and lingcod tacos (Feastro) to tom ka chicken soup (Super Thai) and currywurst (Yummy Foodies), all quick meals at reasonable prices. With Vancouver being a city of people who love to dine out, many of whom come from countries where street food is far more commonplace, it’s no wonder the trend only continues to pick up speed.

      The City of Vancouver expanded its street-food program in 2010 to offer more nutritious and ethnically diverse food. That first year, it received more than 800 applications for 17 spaces. What started as a small pilot program has been growing steadily ever since. In 2011, there were 91 food carts on city streets; the next year, there were 116. This year alone, the city issued 97 stationary-food-vendor permits in addition to 45 permits for “roaming food vending”; these encompass all other food-related trucks, trailers, and carts.

      Vancouver ranked third on a list of the top five food-truck cities in North America by the TV channel Travel and Escape, behind Portland and Austin but beating New York and Toronto.

      Community Pizzeria is one of several trucks that will be serving up fare at this year’s Fringe Festival, running from Thursday (September 8) to September 18. Feast at the Fringe will feature one truck per night, plus more on Fridays and Saturdays, including Aussie Pie Guy, Super Thai, Kaboom Box, Varinicey (pronounced “very nicey”) Pakoras, Old Country Pierogi, and Melt City Grilled Cheese.

      Many of those trucks, including Community Pizzeria, will also be participating in the inaugural Vancouver Street Food Festival on September 11. Presented by the Streetfood Vancouver Society and Memory Laine Events Inc., the daylong family-friendly event is intended to cap off the summer by showcasing the best of Vancouver’s street food.

      Among the 30 participating trucks are Roaming Dragon, Vij’s Railway Express, Tacofino, the Reef Runner, Slavic Rolls, Taste of Malaysia, C’est Si Bon, This Little Piggy, Dim Sum Express, Big Red’s Poutine, and the Bannock Wagon. Surrey’s Big Voodoo band will be playing live, and there will be kids’ activities like face-painting.

      “It’s kind of the last food-truck hurrah of the summer,” says Fenton, who is a board member of the Streetfood Vancouver Society. “It’s going to be a good one.”

      The Vancouver Street Food Festival takes place on September 11 at the Concord Pacific parking lot (88 Pacific Boulevard) from noon to 6 p.m. Admission is free.

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