SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/129115
Food Trucks Put Local Chefs on Road to National Culinary Acclaim W hether you come to SXSW for Music, Interactive, Film or all of the above, there is one constant, universal truth: SXSW is also about food. Once, that meant nothing but barbecue (ideally with a pilgrimage to the nearby town of Lockhart or to the Salt Lick on Austin's southwest fringe) and breakfast tacos, perhaps with a chicken-fried steak palate cleanser. Now, you will find a variety of options including sushi, ramen, bahn mi, a hundred different ways to eat a pig and 20 different ways to eat a brussel sprout, not to mention barbecue within the city limits that competes with — and in some cases, transcends — the historic Central Texas smoked meat joints. You will also find more than 1,000 food trailers, and it is fair to say they have played a giant role in making Austin an internationally acclaimed restaurant city. To wit: the last Austinite to grace the cover of Food and Wine as one of 2011's "Best New Chefs," Bryce Gilmore of Barley Swine, first made his Paul Qui name cooking on wheels with the Odd Duck To Farm trailer. The two Austin institutions on Bon Appetit's 2013 list of "the 20 Most Important Restaurants in America" also have strong food truck bloodlines. Franklin Barbecue began life as a trailer, while the Uchi and Uchiko restaurants introduced to the world 2012 James Beard Award recipient and Top Chef winner Paul Qui, who gave Austin his Asian street food empire East Side King and will open up his own, eponymous restaurant later this spring "I feel the whole truck thing allows chefs to come out of the kitchen and be very adventurous, and Austin is very diverse," he says. "Some amazing things happen in very tiny kitchens, from African food to burgers to fried chicken to Asian street food to Indian food." For Qui, starting a truck when he already had a restaurant job was about having fun. "There was not a lot of thought put into the original [East Side King]," he says. "It was just about cooking with people that I really enjoyed cooking with." For Gilmore, his truck was a place to start. "I was ready to do my own thing and it was the best way for me to do it," says Gilmore of Odd Duck. "I knew if I could at least get a wood grill in that trailer, I could do enough out of it to cook some good food for people." Gilmore's dedication to sourcing the freshest, most local food was also natural for a kitchen with no storage space. Cooking on the fly in spite of budgetary and technical limitations, something Qui says helped him win Top Chef, is also why food trucks go hand-in-hand so naturally with rock n roll. Food trucks as the new indie rock is a tired comparison (sooooooo 2010), but food trucks and the Austin music scene come down to the same thing: an endlessly renewable supply of young, drunk people with open ears and palates. As with music, some things are better if they preserve what you liked about them in the first place, and some things are better when they get to grow. East Side King now has a fourth location with a proper kitchen 26 SXSWORLD / MARCH MUSIC 2013 REBECCA FONDREN by Jason Cohen (inside Hole in the Wall, the venerable University of Texas bar and music venue), with a fifth, stand-alone spot on the way. Meanwhile, Gilmore is in the process of re-launching Odd Duck as a proper restaurant. Barley Swine was named the second-best restaurant in town by Austin American-Statesman critic Matthew Odam (with Uchi ranked #1), but no trucks were on the newspaper's Top 50, since service and ambiance don't factor in. "That doesn't mean I don't think there is some seriously great food coming from some trucks around town," Odam says, citing JMueller BBQ (which has since fractured into La Barbecue & JSM Meats), East Side King and Three Little Pigs as ones that would have made his Top 25 just based on food. Yet, though Odam thinks trucks are here to stay, he thinks that their local boom is probably over. "You can't just open a truck these days and expect people to come (and come back) because you exist," says Odam. "As with traditional restaurants, it's (almost) always about the food." Still, trucks do still offer a particular experience. For one thing, they're cheaper for the customer; you don't have to tip 20%, and you're not paying for broken china. "In a lot of ways, the trailers are a better value," says Qui. "You get the same quality food, for less." Ideally, you also always know the guy inside the truck gabbing (or tweeting) about some new ingredient is actually the chef. Until he opens up that second truck or bricks-and-mortar place, that is. But when that happens, just as there will always be another DIY band ready turn up the amps and play two chords, there will always be self-taught chefs, ready to try something new with two burners and a few ingredients. Their food truck could be your life. ■ Paul Qui has teamed up with SXSW to curate SouthBites, which will showcase food trailers from Austin and beyond at Rainey and Driskill streets for all nine days of the conference.