Thursday, May 10, 2012

604: lunch time dilemma?

Go check out the new 12 street vendors!

VANCOUVER — Ta da! Meet the 12 new street food locations and the vendors who landed them. Most have not yet opened but they’ll be operating soon enough. Most are still rushing to get their carts or trucks or vans ready. For the most up-to-date information on dates, times, menus, websites and social media information, the street food app (download at streetfoodapp.com/vancouver) is your buddy, or you can access each vendor on the website. You might come across unfamiliar operators on the streets — those might be subleased locations operating under a grandfathered clause, or hotdog vendors who have changed up their menu. If they’re outside of downtown Vancouver, they might have a mobile permit, which allows them to roam. And you might find some street food vendors showing up at farmers’ markets or other events.

PIG ON THE STREET
West side of 700 Howe St., mid-block. Now open.

“Achin’ for bacon?” asks their pink piglike van. Vendors Mark Cothey and Krissy Seymour were doing exactly that, given Cothey’s English, bacon-chomping background. In particular, he needed bacon buddy. (Bacon butty, bacon sarnie, bacon sanger – call it what you might, it’s a bacon sandwich with ketchup.) “It’s a staple back home,” says Cothey, a former ESL teacher. “Here, it’s the smell of onions at hotdog stands. There, it’s the smell of bacon, wafting 50 metres and it always tastes as good as it smells.” So! The couple converted their “home” into a street food van, shrink-wrapping it with pink piggy branding. (The van used to be their weekend camping van.) The idea was inspired by a hangover in the camper van one morning when he awoke in need of a bacon buddy. He saw a niche that needed filling.
Krissy, with a culinary and restaurant background, is the chef. Her flatbread for the sandwiches has bacon fat in it, unless you opt for the vegetarian. Bacon buddy choices include Piggy Blues, with local cheeses (plural), portobello mushrooms, bacon, caramelized onions and mayo; Southern Piggy comes with a bourbon barbecue sauce and roasted corn, greens and chipotle mayo. Their bacon is from an Abbotsford supplier, double-smoked and “halfway between side and back bacon,” says Cothey. Following the bacon-gone-crazy trend, they do a bacon brownie.

No comments:

Post a Comment