Food Truck Drama in Downtown Las Vegas

I adore the explosion of food trucks that started with the success of the Korean BBQ Taco slinging Kogi trucks in LA and erupted into a full blown phenomenon all over the country. Food trucks make it easy for a chef with a good idea to get their small business off the ground quickly with lower overhead than a brick and mortar restaurant, and they provide a wonderful alternative to the usual fast food options that are open late into the night after many drinks have been consumed.

Like any other major city (or even minor one... I saw a lineup of trucks in Boca Raton, for goodness sake), Las Vegas has a huge fleet of food trucks serving up a diverse offering of mobile delicacies. Among the most popular trucks rolling around The Strip and Downtown are Fukuburger (which was so successful that a brick and mortar version opened in Hollywood last year), Haulin' Balls, Sin City Wings, Chi-Town Huslter, Slidin' Thru, LBS Patty Wagon,  Sausagefest, Lola D's Kitchen, The Redneck Kitchen, and Engine 1 Pizza (served out of an actual decommissioned Fire Truck). More and more chefs are getting their concepts off the ground and onto the road with each passing month, and I've noticed new trucks the last few times that I've attended the First Fridays Art Festival.

The success of food trucks has sent brick and mortar proprietors into a bit of a tizzy, which is kind of what always happens when a new development in any industry threatens to take away market share from the old guard. And now many Las Vegas restaurant owners are working to regulate food trucks and keep them from posting up near their front doors.


On one level, I get it. It seems sorta unfair to find a way to put together the money to open a restaurant and then have the competition park in front of the real estate you struggled to fund. But come on... how many people are planning to go out for a nice sit-down meal and decide at the last minute to grab food off a truck? Sure, if you were headed to a pizza by the slice joint, then maybe you'd change your mind and decide to grab some Wings or a Burger. But really, if you're looking to get romantic dinner and drinks, are you really going to change your plans at the last minute just because the Sausagefest truck is idling outside of Bar + Bistro? I think not.

A proposition was recently shot down that would require food trucks to always park at least 300 feet of a restaurant. While it's fair to ask trucks to not park right in front of a restaurant, staying 300 feet away from any restaurant is insane. Another proposed law would have required that all trucks stay 1300 feet away from brick and mortars, a truly insane and over the top number. These proposed laws would basically make it impossible for food trucks to park in the same city as their competition.

The real irony of this whole battle, and I'm certainly not the first person to point this out, is that many Downtown restaurateurs who have benefited from the neighborhood's policies that have made it easier to open a small business are now fighting against other small businesses. It seems especially gross to witness supposedly progressive and cool local business owners trying to block out other small businesses from thriving. Trying to keep a Walmart out of the neighborhood is one thing... trying to block The Redneck Kitchen from cooking up some homestyle Southern fare down the block from a sit-down restaurant seems downright un-neighborly. It's against the spirit of everything the slowly building Downtown renaissance is building towards.

With a 300 foot buffer between trucks and every restaurant, where would the trucks park on The Strip or in Downtown on First Friday fest nights in a town with hundreds of eating establishments? 300 feet is such a wide radius that once they are out of the prescribed zone of one place, they're probably going to be in the nuclear footprint of another eatery.

Other cities have passed similar laws and managed to remain reasonable. In progressive haven Austin, trucks are not allowed to park within 20 feet of a brick and mortar restaurant. This seems fair, reasonable, and completely chilled out as are most things about Austin. Restaurants aren't allowed to make laws against other restaurants opening down the block from their front doors... why should they shut down a food truck's right to compete in a neighborhood with plenty of hungry potential customers?

In the end, the places that will thrive, whether they serve their food from a brick and mortar storefront or out of a firetruck, are the places that serve the tastiest grub. That's how America is supposed to work, and that's how food truck regulations should work in this election year!

We built that. Forward, not backward.

Food Trucks Invade the Strip

Food trucks selling cheap eats have posted up at construction sites and outside bars and concerts in cities since the beginning of time. But hip haute-cuisine sold off of trucks is a more recent phenomenon, made popular by the success of The Kogi Korean BBQ taco truck, which offered innovative fusion style food and was savvy about self-promotion on Twitter. Pretty quickly, there were food trucks all over Los Angeles offering an endless variety of international cuisines, from Indian to Peuvian to Argentian. Some trucks resorted to gimmicks, like hiring hot chicks to sell burgers or creating fancy versions of grilled cheese meant to appeal equally to our inner child and our inner hipster food snob. The trend got so popular so quickly, The Food Network launched a hit reality show/cooking competition all about food trucks.

If the presence of diverse food trucks is a test whether a city has a thriving hipster scene (a premise I'm positing with no real evidence to back it up), then Las Vegas gets a passing grade. Sin City has seen a full on food truck invasion, and on any given Friday night you can find all kinds of tasty treats sold off the back of trucks all over town. First Fridays provide a great opportunity to sample the city's offerings, as many of the best trucks gather in Downtown Vegas for the artsy monthly event.

Proof that Vegas isn't quite there in terms of hipster culture is the fact that most of the food trucks offer less than groundbreaking cuisines. There are a lot of burger trucks, many of them very good. SlidinThru Slidertruck, LBS Patty Wagon, TastyBunz, and the Green Chili-centric Sloppi Jos all offer tasty takes on the American classic, but the irreverently named Fukuburger is the best (and most popular). The truck was recently written up in a pretty good New York Times Travel article about Las Vegas, in which the writer described Fuku's Karai burger, adorned with cucumbers, avocado cream, spicy mayo and a habanero soy sauce "the best burger" he’d had in years, an assessment I basically agree with. Los Angeles is going through a true Burger renaissance, with selections like the unbeatable Office Burger at Father's Office and the MSG-infused delights of the quickly expanding Umami Burger chain, but Fuku's Karai Burger is truly something special.

Non-burger offerings include the  BBQ Boy truck, offering Filipino BBQ on a stick, Haulin' Balls (with a creative selection of meatball sandwiches that un-appetizingly call Ballwiches), and Snow Ono (selling authentic treats for people who know the difference between Hawaiin Shave Ice and the more common-on-the-mainland Snocones).


The selection of Vegas trucks continues to grow, but you can't find too much for those with a truly adventurous palette quite yet. No trucks in Sin City can compete with LA's diverse offerings, which include Nom Nom (which serves Banh Mi sandwiches and other Vietnamese foods),  Ludo Truck (offering gourmet fare from French Chef and "Top Chef Masters" breakout Ludovic Lefebvre), CoolHaus (a gourmet ice cream sandwich truck that features unique flavors served in edible wrapping paper), or Kogi (the grandaddy of them all, as it were). Vegas has become a foodie-tourist destination, but only for sit down gourmet restaurants. Until a chef is innovative (or crazy) enough to gamble on a unique international fusion cuisine served off a truck, LA will still have the edge in terms of mobile fine dining.