DINER: Is The BCRFA Lobbying City Hall To Clamp Down On Vancouver’s Food Carts?

Want a laugh? The Sun is reporting a non-story that says the BC Foodservices & Restaurant Association is warning City Hall to ease up on all the food carts.

“We’re getting to the point now where it’s pretty much at the maximum,” association president Ian Tostenson said Tuesday.

Um, what? It’s heartening to see that City Hall only politely nodded at Mr. Tostenson in response.  The BCRFA is a fine organisation (if a little out of touch), and they’ve done plenty to lobby the province against all the red tape facing local restaurants, but they really need to put the silly back in the jar on this one.

Tostenson agreed food carts serve a specific market of people wanting fast food on the go. But if there are too many, this could cause problems for established fast food restaurants.

Oh noes! Whatever happened to all’s fair in love and restaurants? This is hardly a serious challenge to the city. If anything, it’s a weak shot across the bow, and not a little illustrative of how out of touch the BCRFA is with Vancouver’s changing dining culture. Food carts are the best thing to happen to Vancouver’s food scene in a long, long time. Could Tostenson just be bridling because so few (if any) of them have decided to join the BCRFA? Many have actually banded together to launch their own association instead, and with the BCRFA looking after the interests of fast food restaurants, who can blame them?

The Message To Vancouver City Hall From Anthony Bourdain…

My friend Miguel recently loaned me his copy of Anthony Bourdain’s new book Medium Raw. It was a bit of a rambler, jumping from his sordid past to his comparatively shining presence, but one passage stuck with me, ringing as it does very applicably to Vancouver in the wake of City Hall’s recent baby steps toward bringing street food to local curbs (led by Councillor Heather Deal). Let me preface it by saying that I’ve been pretty hard on them in recent months – perhaps even hysterically so in some recent media interviews, saying among a great many other unkind things that our municipal government’s “.22 caliber imaginations were insufficient for our .357 Magnum city”. What I haven’t been is very constructive, and I regret that. So I offer this Bourdain snippet in the hope that it might prove useful to them if they really do want to cement Vancouver’s reputation as one of the world’s most exciting food cities. In the middle of discussing the impact of the recession on restaurants in New York, Bourdain writes,

If any good comes out of all the pain and insecurity, I can only hope that the Asian-style food court/hawker center is one of them. This institution is way overdue for an appearance (on a large scale) in America. Scores of inexpensive one-chef/one-specialty business (basically, food stalls) clustered around a “court” of shared tables. When will some shrewd and civic minded investors (perhaps in tandem with their city governments) put aside some parking lot-size spaces (near commercial districts) where operators from many lands can sell their wares? Sharing tables, as in classic fast-food food courts? Why, with our enormous Asian and Latino populations, can’t we have dai pai dong – literally, “big sign street”, the Chinese version of the indigenous food court, like they do in Hong Kong – or hawker centers, like in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur? Or “food streets,” like Hanoi and Saigon? The open-to-the-air “wet” taco vendors and quesadilla-makers of Mexico City?

Food preparation areas could be enclosed, as they are in Singapore, so food handling and sanitation issues can hardly be an unsolvable impediment: Singapore is the most rigorously nanny of the nanny states – with the most vibrant hawker culture. The hawker center could be an answered prayer for every hard-pressed office worker in a hurry, every blue collar worker on a budget, every cop on a lunch hour, as well as obsessive foodies at every income level. “Authenticity”; artisanship; freshness; incredible, unheard of variety – and for cheap? All under one roof? This, let us hope, is at least part of our future – whatever happens.

I usually won’t reference Singapore as a positive (not least because one small narcotics offense comes with a mandatory death sentence), but if they can do it, we most certainly could, too. Indeed, why stop at mobile food trucks?

Applications For Vancouver’s New Street Food Pilot Project

We’re hopeful that we might actually see some interesting street food this summer with City Hall’s change of heart on sidewalk vendors and food trucks. No fewer than five restaurateurs with existing businesses have passed word on the down low that they’re interested in getting mobile, and I imagine there are plenty more dreamers (who are just as keen) that we aren’t privy to. The deadline for those seeking to apply to have a mobile food truck or cart within the city limits is June 30th at 4 pm. Get the skinny after the jump… Read more

“Roaming Dragon” Set To Turn Page On Vancouver Street Food

photos by Erin Simkin

A new company called Gourmet Syndicate is poised to make a move on Vancouver city streets if City Hall’s mobile food truck pilot program doesn’t ruffle any No Fun feathers next month. Their first mobile catering brand is a pimped out, 25 foot pan-Asian looker called Roaming Dragon.

It’s a fully equipped kitchen on wheels, starring the consultative talents of none other than Don Letendre, formerly the long-time executive chef at the Opus Hotel. His menu showcases panko crusted Chinese sausage and shrimp stuffed rice balls; chicken karaage with passionfruit and palm sugar; hoisin pork belly slider steam buns; duck confit salads with pickled pineapple and more. I just got off the phone with company principal Jason Apple, and he promises restaurant quality food on the streets very soon. Too good to be true? Nope. It just debuted at the Richmond Night Market this week, and folks from city council have already been given a full walk-through and taste. Read more

City Hall Inching Deliciously Close To Accepting Street Food

Portland street food scene | photo: camknows

Arguably the most embarrassing facet of our food city is its paucity of street food. Thanks to a ruling that is now 32 years old, City Hall only permits hot dogs, chestnuts and popcorn to be sold from carts. You might be able to score some crepes at a Farmers Market, but where’s my Pad Thai and my fish tacos? Where, goddammit!

It’s been a real sore point with local foodies, many of whom look upon our barren streetscape with no small twitch of shame. In comparison, the variety of cuisines offered by the catering trucks and carts of Portland and Seattle is straight up staggering. You can score anything. While there have been feints of change from the No Fun Nabobs for a while now, it looks like there will actually be a pilot project in place by July that will bring new flavours to a curb near you. From Randy Shore in the Vancouver Sun:

The move will likely expand the menu available on city sidewalks from pre-cooked packaged foods such as hotdogs to more freshly prepared fare. The city soon will issue a call for expressions of interest seeking vendors who want to offer streetside food service, according to the acting manager of streets administration.

Grant Woff said the city is starting to implement the pilot project and looking for street locations where catering trucks or trailers can set up. The city already has 60 locations for cart-based vendors and is identifying new spaces to accommodate larger carts, Woff said.

“There a huge amount of interest in this,” said Coun. Heather Deal, who first proposed allowing fresh food and food preparation in a motion to council two years ago. “I get more e-mail about this than any other topic.”