This past Sunday I was a participating artist at the Homegrown Music Festival at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant. It was a great event with a plethora of local artists performing all day, a hand full of visual arts, and a nice array of food trucks. With my photography, I sometimes set up a booth at fine craft and art shows and often find myself in a precarious situation with regards to finding foods that I can eat with my allergy. In an ideal situation I would bring food from home but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. With 5 trucks though I felt confident I could find something. Long before I was planning to eat I perused the menus of the trucks and began with my questions. One truck (actually a trailer/truck in this case) was only pizza so that one was easy to eliminate. Another had things like all types of hot dogs/sausage dogs and I never eat those out anymore as most of them are processed with milk products.(Not a very well known fact!) Also, I figured that if I looked early and found nothing I could send my husband on a run to a nearby restaurant for something if I felt "stuck." But I found something. A truck called Pot Kettle Black had Chicken Chili that sounded good. When the time came to eat I got a bowl of this. It was a decent sized bowl for $4.00. It was a brothy version with big chunks of nice chicken breast meat, navy beans, chilis, and onions. Mmmm...it was delicious! It had a nice heat to it without being overwhelming and was flavored perfectly. I really meant to take a picture of it but it was so good that I was halfway done when I realized this! And a photo of a half-eaten bowl of soup just isn't that appealing. After lunch I did go back to take pictures of the truck and was given complete access and a great tour by Chef Jon Caton.
Every space within the truck seems precisely planned and has to all be able to be stabilized for travel. I have spent enough time in kitchens to really appreciate the great food that came out of that tight but well-planned space. It was really nice of them to give me the great little tour, be friendly and helpful about my requests and deliver one of the best versions of chicken chili that I have had!
