March 7, 2012

Burnt

Could Boston have the best food trucks in the country? Bonme, Roxy’s, Cupcakory. They are not only our friends, they’re making some killer food.

[PLUG: Dreaming about food trucks? Check the upper left column for details about our latest Food Truck Seminar 3/22/12. Free and open to all. Oh yeah, and those guys are going to be there speaking on a panel of food truck operators.]

I know, I know, we’re not the big deal here in Boston that NYC and LA are. We don’t have the food truck history of SF, or the lots and lots of wagons that dot Portland. We don’t have the lax laws that make Austin so much fun. But hear me out here.

Enzo and I were just in NYC. This was my latest of dozens of trips around the country to keep up with the quickly evolving world of street food. Talking to Ernie, who is the best truck builder in NYC, I realized something. When we told him we made our food to order, I think he nodded, but I’m not sure he believed us. But then we were talking about certain menu items and all of a sudden Ernie said “wait a minute, Eggplant, you fry eggplant? But you can’t HOLD eggplant!”

At that moment standing surrounded by Ernie’s forest of food trucks and wagons I realized that none of these vendors are making food to order. Most of the trucks are basically different versions of the hot dog truck. Empanadas: heat and serve. Dumplings: heat and serve. Pizza: heat and serve. Grilled Cheese: heat and serve. Treats truck: heat and serve. Waffles: heat and serve. Hot dogs: heat and serve. You get the idea. Sort of amazing, right? And all of the sudden I’m seeing trucks differently. After nearly 4 years in this business my whole understanding of food trucks is shifting under my feet.

(read past the break to learn about the burnt stuff)

So how does that bring me to Boston? We’ve got some amazing trucks here.

At Clover we started cooking our food on our trucks. If you come by for breakfast you’ll see us making the soup. This was sort of a funny accident in the beginning. The commissary in JP we were using would charge us by the hour. So as business grew we couldn’t afford to keep adding hours back there. So instead we started doing prep on the truck. And we liked the idea that you could see the prep happening on the trucks.

The other part of the model, the eggplant not holding part, has a different background. Rolando and I both really love stuff that was just made. Most of my favorite foods are sort of messy, and they don’t hold at all. It’s sort of natural that our menu would be built around stuff that is best the minute we put it in your hand (though it makes our take-out challenging).

And I think given how the Boston food truck scene evolved, maybe others were thinking the same thing as us. Clover got going in 2008, the only truck in our line-up crazy enough to build food to order. We kept hearing it from the guy who ran MIT dining: “You’re doing this all wrong. You can’t make food this way. You can’t make it to order.” But we didn’t listen, we’ve never had freezers, never had steam tables.

And as the other trucks evolved, many of them are also making real food for you. And while you could argue that Roxy’s isn’t exactly building those grilled cheese to order, they are cooking with real food. Their fries are real potatoes, par cooked and all. It’s pretty awesome. There are some trucks out there that aren’t anything like this, but for a smallish city Boston has really amazing food coming off of trucks. This is more than heat and serve.

Whether or not we have the best trucks, we definitely have a better grilled cheese. I don’t think Roxy’s has ever put anything like this burnt specimen through their window. While in NYC I had burnt grilled cheese from a grilled cheese truck. Burnt pizza from a pizza truck (not kidding), and burnt ice cream from an ice cream truck. Really, the ice cream was from Coolhaus and it was just totally freezer burned. You know, the kind when you have it in your own freezer it’s just not worth eating, you just throw it away. These trucks were all working hard in the rain at one of the most choice spots in the city. Made me think differently about our little food truck scene here in Boston.

Recent Posts

May 24, 2023
I recently learned that garlic has 4 stages that it goes through on its journey to become the cured stuff you’re probably used to seeing. This year I learned about Green Garlic. It’s the mild, sweet, un-cured bulb, plus the fresh green shoots. We got our hands on a super limited crop from Red Fire out in Granby, and so we decided to see if we could incorporate it into every single different type of box we make next week…
May 23, 2023
We’ve intentionally steered clear of bowls for a long time. If you see Ayr tomorrow, ask him why : ) Tomorrow (5/24) we’re starting a 2-week test of bowls at CloverNTV, our restaurant in Newtonville. If it goes well, this could represent the beginning of one of the bigger changes our menu has EVER seen. We’re hoping we’ve cracked the code to bowls that are seasonal, carefully-composed, easy to carry, and craveable – all the things we love about bowls, and none of the things we don’t.
May 18, 2023
I used to eat Cheesy Grits almost every morning, and if you were eating with us around 2017, I bet you did too. We took our Plimoth-ground-grits off the menu for a little while, but now they’re back at all locations (except for the HUB for the time being). Stop in for breakfast during the next 2 weeks – we’re aiming for these to be hot and ready at 8am and we’ll be selling them til they’re out. The staff has been waking up extra early and adding a lot of extra whisking to their mornings, so we’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve never had our Cheesy Grits before, here are some things you should know….
May 16, 2023
What is Chris eating? When we toured the field at Siena, the crew was planting dahlia tubers. They get planted in warm soil, will grow all summer and will be ready for harvest in the fall. They reminded us of sunchokes, so we got to talking about whether the tubers are edible and it turns out they are! Are they delicious?
May 15, 2023
Do you want a beautiful box of produce for a fraction of what you’d pay in the grocery store? Do you want to invest in a farm’s success and be with them throughout the harvest season? Do you think you hate eggplants but you’ve just never had a good one? It might be time to look into a CSA (or farmshare).
May 5, 2023
I remember exactly the moment we started celebrating May the 4th (“May the Force” be with you). We were on a planning call about meal boxes and we were talking about how we were going to launch our Taco Tuesday program on Cinco de Mayo (May the 5th). Chris accidentally said “May the 4th” and Ayr said, “May the 4th! We should do a Star Wars Box!”
April 24, 2023
If you’ve been reading for a while you probably know we hate waste. Most of the time, minimizing waste is pretty unglamorous, but every once in a while our mission to reduce waste takes us to some very cool places. I look after Clover’s grocery marketplaces (including our Assembly Row grocery store). A few months ago I noticed that the marketplaces were going through a lot of our paper bags. They’re compostable, which is great. But I think the best bag is one you can use over and over again.
April 22, 2023
Few people know that Clover is environmental activism. This is by design.  And it works. We do these customer surveys and see that 9 out of 10 Clover customers are NOT vegetarian. Yet I’m constantly troubled by conflicting feelings about the approach we’ve taken.
April 10, 2023
Over the next 3 weeks, on a rolling schedule, most Clovers are going to be giving out a free hot or cold George Howell Montecarlos coffee to anyone who stops in between opening and 11 am. No strings— we just want to see you all and talk about coffee!! George Howell’s Montecarlos is a single-origin coffee we love for our pour-overs…
March 30, 2023
Each year, early spring is a busy time at the Clover kitchen because we have 2 of our tastiest boxes, usually back-to-back. For the Passover box, a lot of care goes into the kashering of the kitchen, with Rabbi Dolinger coming in to ensure the box is totally Kosher for Passover via Lighthouse Kosher.
March 15, 2023
That photo is corn fritters drizzled with maple syrup. We just started frying them up for a 2pm special – and they’re an element of our Maple Meal Box. If you head away from the city this time of year, you’ll see signs for sugar shacks, where maple sap gets boiled down into syrup and little restaurants pop up to serve pancakes, corn fritters, cider donuts, and dill pickles (to cut through the sweetness of the fresh syrup).
February 28, 2023
You’ve been asking! And finally we can announce: sunchokes are here, starting tomorrow, 3/1. Thanks to Pete’s Greens in VT for getting us local sunchokes. At breakfast we’ll be making The Sunchoke Truffle: fluffy house-baked pita, creamy truffled butter, caramelized onions, a 6.5 minute egg, and thin, crispy sunchoke slices. At lunch and dinner: The Sunchoke Mushroom: scallion-black-pepper mayo, fresh arugula, roasted crimini mushrooms, fried brined onions, and roasted sunchokes. But what IS a sunchoke?