• Our most positive thoughts go out to all those affected by Hurricane Sandy. Please contact American Red Cross if you’d like to help.
• Please cast your vote for Food Truck Nerd for Mobile-Cuisine.com's “Favorite Local Food Truck Blog.” Click here for voting instructions. Thank you!
• Vote for your favorite podcasts (besides this one) in the 2012 Stitcher Awards.
• Be sure to vote on or before November 6, 2012 in the General Election.

Recordings

All these recordings relate to the San Francisco Giants' epic 2012 World Series win.

• I spoke to Viet from Bigg Shrimp’n and Henry and Hao from Porky’s SJ prior to Game 4. Recorded 10/28/2012.
• After the win, Steven and Kashi from Baba Kabob went up to San Francisco to attend the celebratory parade. Recorded 11/1/2012.

• Roaming Hunger has a new page dedicated to San Jose. No longer are we lumped together with San Francisco. Recognize!
• Check out another food truck locator web site: Edible Ave. They do lump the whole Bay Area in with San Francisco, but we can’t hold that against them.
• While we’re talking web sites, Best Food Trucks Bay Area is a new blog bringing you samples from a wide range of trucks. Oddly enough the background color of their page is nearly identical to mine. An homage?

Recordings

• I was invited to the headquarters of Cube in Mountain View, where Chris Morton and Adam Rouman told me all about their new easy-to-use point-of-sale system, which they are heavily marketing to food trucks and mobile vendors as well as brick-and-mortar businesses. Recorded 8/23/2012.

Ack! I didn’t notice until it was too late that Chris’ eyes were closed in the photo above. My apologies.

Food trucks, hit me up if you want a Food Truck Nerd sticker for your truck. They were printed for me by Miller’s Vinyl Graphics in San Jose. I’ve handed out over 50 so far so I guess I can add “defacer of private property”  to my resume.

Recordings

• Robert from Eat on Monday discusses their wildly popular dish at San Jose Night Market. I hope Flowery eventually got hers. Recorded 7/28/2012.
• I try to drum up support for Food Truck Olympics among food truck folk at Moveable Feast Garden City on 7/28/2012 . But first Cold Suspension ignites the Olympic spirit at Los Gatos Food Fest. (That was recorded 7/27/2012, actually while the London Opening Ceremonies were airing on the West Coast.)
  • Pollo Fritto
  • Pacific Coast Highway
  • Random teens
  • Treatbot
  • Eat on Monday
  • O Mi Ninja
• Hao from Porky’s SJ weighs in on the Sunnyvale Planning Commission Public Hearing on food trucks. Recorded 8/7/2012. To provide your constructive input to the process, contact:
  • Sunnyvale: Rosemarie Zulueta, rzulueta@ci.sunnyvale.ca.us, (408) 730-7437. http://foodtrucks.insunnyvale.com/
  • Mountain View: Chris Costanzo, Chris.Costanzo@mountainview.gov, (650) 526-7712
• Karen Hester tells us all about Bites off Broadway, the weekly gathering she organized which is spearheading the food truck movement in Oakland. Recorded 8/10/2012. That day Kehilla Community Synagogue was there conducting a Pop-up Shabbat, and you’ll hear a snippet of music from that.

Sure, San Francisco had a bit of a busy weekend, but things were hopping quite nicely in San Jose too, thank you very much. Hear all about it in this episode, along with colorful interviews with Speedy Panini and the Grilled Cheese Bandits. When you say the names together like that, they sound like an awesome band, don’t they?

• Thanks to Moveable Feast for hosting a stellar Industry Party Saturday night, October 6, 2012 at San Pedro Square Market in San Jose. I don’t know what was better: the fantastic food provided by Little Chef Counter, or the earthy tunes soul-belted by Sweet HayaH.
• The next day the city hosted the Rock ‘n’ Roll 1/2 Marathon. I’m very proud of Paulette who ran it like a champ, only her second half-marathon. There were no food trucks there which prompts the question: why not?

Recordings

• Graziano of Speedy Panini gives me a language lesson and shares the secrets behind their fresh homestyle Italian food. Recorded July 25, 2012.
• Shayne and Dennis of Grilled Cheese Bandits steal the show with their unmasked enthusiasm that holds up well. I’m done. Hear about their deep dive into all things cheese, bread, and grilled. Recorded July 26, 2012.

This episode is all about the Grand Opening of San Jose Night Market on July 21, 2012. Hear a metric ton of interviews with vendors, diners, movers, and shakers. You’ll also hear some usual suspects like Paulette and Dan Hugo. Night Market is done for 2012, but catch a bit of the energy that made it so much fun.

Recordings

•  Chris from Dough Truck
• Mark from The WoW Truck
• Brandon from Treatbot
• Kin from Forbitten City
• Tera and Nancy from O Mi Ninja
• Cool guy from Fairycakes
• Mari from Night Market
• The Far East Dragon Lion Dance Association drummers
• Joanna from Night Market
• Stacy Shih from San Jose City Councilmember Ash Kalra’s office, San Jose City Councilmember Kansen Chu, San Jose City Councilmember Ash Kalra
• Ash Kalra again, a little less formal this time
• Christine Sebastian from Night Market
• Kevin and Will from MoBowl
• Ryan Sebastian from Night Market
• Artist and vendor Nancy Meyer from The Mosaic Gardens
• Flowery, last customer in line at Eat on Monday
• Bella and Peter, playing bad cop/good cop in the VIP pagoda
• John, Leslie, and friends at Treatbot
• The reprobates from The One Stop Fun Shop

Don’t miss the photos and videos the CW Podsquad shot at Night Market that night.

Recordings

• Gabriel from Takoz Mod Mex introducing us to his colorful truck and his picturesque food, recorded in San Jose 7/13/2012.
• Manisha and Joseph from Banjara Bistro, recorded in San Jose 7/16/2012. No, you’re not experiencing déjà-entendu; we have spoken with Manisha before in a past life. Keep listening for a side of Manisha and Joseph you don’t often see (or hear) on a food truck.

• CNET offered a video explaining “How to add any podcast to the iOS Podcasts app.” It didn’t work for me; let me know if it works for you. Here’s my RSS 2.0 URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/FoodTruckNerd. If it doesn’t work for you, you can still find my podcast in the iTunes podcast catalog.
• Check out this happy blog from a Texan teen who plans to eat at 100 Trucks in 100 Days. Has fork, will travel.
• The new book Running a Food Truck for Dummies is now out. I bought it and want to read it but I’m afraid I might be underqualified.
• The next Word on the StreEats event happens Saturday, August 11, 2012 at Andrew Hill High School in San Jose. Good food for a good cause.
• NASA is hosting a special Moveable Feast event to celebrate the Mars Curiosity Rover Landing, August 5, 2012 at the NASA Ames Research Center. I for one want to be the first to welcome our new burrito overlords.
• KoJa Kitchen has started a new location-only Twitter account: @kojatruckstops. It will be an interesting case study in different ways to use Twitter.
• The WOW Truck is opening a new brick & mortar (yay) in San Mateo (boo, too far). Mabuhay!
• Trucks new and new-to-me:
  • Oh Miso Hungry will be working the streets, covering Asian Fusion cuisine with their Secret Miso Sauce in mid-August. That’s not a longtime from now.
  • Paulette spotted a previously unknown truck called Red Rooster Tacos. Seems this stealthy truck is still under the radar but they can’t hide forever.
  • After a comical miscue, I finally tried the Rajun Cajun Bakun Dog at TasteeBytes SJ, the truck that tastes great, but spells awefull.
• Best wishes to Steph “Nerd Jerk” Cortes and Roger “Effing Awesome” Moore on their impending, seriously nerd-style wedding. You can meet the happy couple in Food Truck Nerd Podcast Episode 16.

Recordings

• Jesse from Twisted Chill talks to me about the unique dessert truck’s first year in operation, and his plans for the year to come. Recorded 6/26/2012 in Milpitas.
• Judy from Waffle Amore rhapsodizes over her love affair with Belgian (as in Belgian Belgian) waffles. Recorded 6/29/2012 in San Jose.

• This is old news but I hadn’t shared it before. Facebook only shares a food truck’s page’s status updates with a subset of that truck’s followers unless the truck pays for greater exposure. Read all about it in “Has Facebook Jumped the Shark for Food Trucks?” on Mobile-Cuisine.com.
• The Seinfeld Soup Nazi food truck is real, folks. What next? The Cosby Jell-o® Pudding Pop-mobile?
• Chicago, New Orleans, and Orange County, CA are added to the list of local governments that are making it tougher for trucks to operate in their areas.
• The City of Sunnyvale is reviewing its food truck policies now. The good news is you can give them your input today. Go right now and take their survey to guide them to rational policy. Sunnyvale resident Dan Hugo will thank you for it.
• Zagat published their list of the best food trucks in San Francisco and the East Bay. Congratulations to the top five! We eagerly await their review of trucks in the South Bay because, you know, we’re not San Francisco.
• “A Sporting Chance” on the blog Tangerine & Cinnamon gives us a peek at the food scene at the London Olympics. Sadly there are no nosh lorries in the Olympic Village.
• Event news:
  • The Food Truck Mafia have ended the Newpark Street Eats events in Newark…
  • …but they have added a new weekly event: Pleasanton Street Eats, lunchtime on Fridays.
  • In August Moveable Feast will be starting a limited run of weekly events at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. Stay tuned for details.
  • San Jose Night Market is in full swing. I’ll have a lot more to say about that in a future episode.
• SanJose.com has been running a regular feature profiling local food trucks, most recently Eat on Monday.
• Read all about We Sushi in Santa Clara Weekly.
• Treatbot was included in Self’s list of the 5 hottest (?!) ice cream trucks.
• Veggie Truckin’ Laura has compiled a Pinterest board of food trucks she likes for your perusing pleasure.
• Trucks new and new-to-me:
  • Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme have launched a new truck concept called Pacific Coast Highway, serving surfer food like burgers and Baja tacos. Henceforth it shall be known as P.S.R.T. P.C.H.
  • TasteeBytes SJ is a new truck slinging over-the-top items like slaw dogs, chicken wings, and pulled pork, slathered in Tastee Sauce.
  • I caught up with the new breakfast-all-day truck Banjara Bistro and had a second lunch of a French Chicken mini crêpe and found it tender and elegant.
  • I finally tried a Dead Dogs hot dog in Los Gatos, and I’m happy to report that while the hearse-and-coffin decor did force me to face my own mortality, it didn’t detract at all from the frankly delicious frank.
  • Little Chef Truck is an experimental mobile offshoot of the non-moveable Little Chef Counter in San Pedro Square Market in San Jose. I enjoyed their Chimichurri flank steak skewers, but I fear the poutine they threaten to unleash on the Bay Area. Look, if they wanted me to eat it, they wouldn’t have called it “curds.”

Recordings

• At the Treatbot Factory soft launch at San Pedro Square Market in San Jose, I waylaid a couple who had wandered over from the Blush Raw Bar to see what all the commotion was about. Recorded June 16, 2012.
• Then Paulette, Clayton, and I chatted with the woman of the hour, Christine Sebastian of Treatbot.

This episode features a chat with a food truck fan who’s been hosting food trucks at his job for months, and recordings from the big dog and some little mermaids at the Fourth of July Rose, White, & Blue Parade in San Jose.

• Thanks to An The Go for tipping me to this fun History of American Food Trucks from Mobile Cuisine.
• Huffington Post’s The Daily Meal sussed out some very cool food trucks, or as they put it, The Coolest Food Trucks Ever.
• I got a kick out of this video Taco Bell put out in which they went to absurd lengths to bring tacos to a small town in Alaska. Apparently it’s hard to get Mexican food in Bethel, AK, but you know what? They have like three Japanese restaurants. Go figure.
• Check the calendar for upcoming events:
  • July 19, 2012: SAMCAR Summer Food Truck Rally, San Carlos
  • July 21, 2012: The Night Market Grand Opening, San Jose
  • July 19-21, 2012: “The Little Mermaid” at Lincoln High School, San Jose (no food trucks there that I know of, but food truck fundraisers helped support performing arts there)
• Honey’s Mobile Sweets is no longer quite as mobile; she sold her truck.
• Bacon Bacon was featured on The United States of Bacon on Discovery Channel.
• Edgewood Eats is no more as we know it. Hopefully they can find a new spot to continue the beloved event in Palo Alto. If you can help, let them know.
• Welcome to Banjara Bistro, a new crêpe truck by Manisha from MiniYums. It’s still unclear what the future of MiniYums is.
• I was happy to finally try the refreshing Italian Ices from Mustache Mike’s Got Italian Ice. The super sweet treat took me back to my childhood, though I never had Italian Ice as a child. Spooky.
• I also made a visit to a generic catering truck called Francisco’s Catering. I’m glad I went, but if anything it served as a reminder why I love gourmet food trucks.
• So a nerd and three bikini models walked up to a food truck. There’s a punchline here, but I’m not touching it.
• Recordings:
  • Bob, who has been organizing food trucks to come to his job for many months. Recorded 6/26/2012 in Milpitas.
  • Larry Clark of the The Alameda Business Association on the Rose, White, & Blue Parade. (Yes I meant to write “the” twice. The Alameda defies grammar.) Recorded 7/4/2012 in San Jose at the parade.
  • Some cast members of the aforementioned Lincoln High School “The Little Mermaid” production. Also recorded 7/4/2012 in San Jose.

Happy Fourth! Be safe and eat well!

• There were a number of eye-catching articles about food trucks published to various media this week. Smithsonian Magazine claimed to find The 20 Best Food Trucks in the United States. GQ included five food trucks among The Best Food in America’s Most Unlikely Places. Costco Connection featured food trucks on their latest cover. Silicon Valley Business Journal surveyed the local food truck scene about business conditions here in the South Bay; writer Diana Samuels spoke to me (hi, Mom!) and some food truck folks in putting together her article, Food truck industry grows in trendiness, startup costs.
• Check the calendarfor upcoming events:
  • July 4, 2012:  4th of July Rose, White, and Blue Parade
  • July 14, 2012: Blox Open House
  • July 14-15, 2012: Newark SummerFest
• New and new-to-me trucks!
  • VoodooVan. Cosmic American cuisine with an edge. (via @DanHugo)
  • Grilled Cheese Bandits. Grilled Cheese this good oughtta be illegal.
  • Waffle Amore. Authentic Belgian waffles with a smorgasbord of toppings. (via @VeggieTruckin)
  • Shrimp Shack. I had the Spicy Shrimp. It put hair on my chest, then singed it off. (via @DanHugo)
• Recordings:
  • Scott from Farmers Market Express. Recorded 6/8/2012 at Moveable Feast Garden City.
  • Amy from Sugar Tree Sweets and Treats. Recorded 6/9/2012 at Club Auto Sport.
  • Phil from Food Truck Mafia and Pizza Pimps. Recorded 6/22/2012.