Recently I had the great opportunity to interview Crepes Bonaparte. They’re 1 of 7 trucks that are competing in Food Network’s The Great Food Truck Race. Be sure to catch the premiere of the show on August 15th at 10 PM ET/9 PM CT!!

Q. Please state your name, name your food truck, and the type of food you are serving.
A. Christian and Danielle Murcia, Crepes Bonaparte (Gaston), French Crepes

Q. How does it feel to be part of this competition and be on national tv?
A. We’re honored to be a part of the competition, chosen by Food Network as one of the best trucks in the country. The experience was definitely a once in a lifetime type thing, and we’re super excited to show viewers our delicious food and unique truck.

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HA so after my lunch of cod schnitzel and dinner at the always popular Shake Shack at Madison Square Park, I REALLY wanted some desserts. If you live in New York City I’m pretty sure you know about the Dessert Truck and how they couldn’t renew their permit so instead opened a store in the Lower East Side. I still have yet been to the store but LUCKILY they got a seasonal permit this summer and the truck is back! It was surprisingly not too hot that night so I walked from the Flatiron District to the East Village where the truck was parked in their old spot.

I walked up to the truck and looked at the menu. They had the same stuff from the shop and well there wasn’t anything that jumped out at me BUT the guy in the truck had already dropped his dinner, wiped his lips and was ready to take my order. What I really wanted was something cold and creamy like the strawberry angel food cake with thyme whipped creme I had last year. Anyways I ended up getting the warm brioche donut holes, 3 for $6. Hmmm soft round balls covered in sugar and filled with nutella. Most of the time I’m a BIG fan of nutella but for some reason I thought there was just a bit too much nutella in these donut holes. I think nutella is at its best when paired with whipped cream or something to make it less dry. Right? Anyone?

- Dessert Truck 6 Clinton Street New York Twitter

This past weekend was the 4th annual New York Food Film Festival. Basically they show food related films and people come and watch and eat. There were about half a dozen different events throughout the city but I only went to the food truck drive-in on Saturday. In the end this event was a bit disappointing. Hopefully they’re fix it somehow for next year. One of the few problems the event had was that it never got crowded which was good for me because I hate crowds but that left a lot of the food vendors standing around waiting for customers to come. Few of the vendors even packed up and left early. It was a free event but they capped the number of tickets to 3000. Later the event even tweeted that they were opening it up to the public. Also the event was a bit tooooooo long, noon to 10pm.

Though few of the vendors, the Cooking Channel gave free popsicles from People’s Pops, The Krave Truck and Wafels & Dinges, had a constant stream of customers. I definitely was guilty of being in those lines. Sooorrrrryyyyyy but The Krave Truck is like the closest we have to the Kogi Truck and they’re from New Jersey. Also who doesn’t want free popsicles?

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So the LA Street Food Fest on Saturday wasn’t a total epic failure. I did get to eat a few things, from The Gastrobus and Dim Sum Truck, and let me just say, there were pretty damn good. The only plus side of the VIP lounge was the free booze, trying out different teas from T Salon (which I found out is from NY), and catching the debut from the Dim Sum Truck.

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How do you want to f–k with people? How do you make people regret paying $30 for a VIP ticket? How do you make people feel like they wasted their day standing in 1 line for 3 hours just to eat few bites? I guess it was pretty easy at the first LA Street Food Fest that was held today in downtown LA.

I admit that it was a great idea and mad props for the people to pull this whole event off. BUT I did not see any sort of planning on their part. On their site it said “Get ready to eat your heart out” well I didn’t really eat my heart out. I only had the patient to stand in line for 1 truck. I know I know I can’t blame them for my inpatient but it’s really no fair to the attendees and to the truck vendors when they don’t try to have a manageable number of attendees. People were sad to be turned away and frustrated to be in line for 2.5hrs for food. And when the trucks run out of food, who will the people blame? The food trucks of course. It was said that 15,000 people passed through the gate today. If you’re a truck vendor how do you prepare for that? You want to keep the line moving but you can only move so fast. I am still reading a lot of angry tweet about today.

So VIP. General admission was $5 and VIP was $30. Good thing I got a media pass and did not have to pay that stupid $30. For $30 you get a private bar, a lady chatting with you about her fake grass, a patio with a stupid view, a gift bag, and restrooms. I felt bad for the $5 people, where will they pee? Probably the best part with as a vip was to try dim sum from the Dim Sum truck. I’ll write about what I ate in a later post. Just those few things, how does that considered as VIP? VIP means F U I’m gonna go cut that long line! Nope, no cutting. You still had to stand in those long lines.

Also this was not a celebration of street food in LA. Where were the taco trucks?

This was quite sad. Also it took me 30mins just to find a stupid parking and I had to pay $7 for it. Argh LA!!!!!

There were many things on my to-eat list this time around. Compare to my last trip home, which was just an extended weekend, I had to pack a lot of food trucking into 1 day. This time around I had a total of 11 days……11 days of 70 degree LA weather perfect for outdoor dining.

I was looking through buttermilk Truck’s schedule for the week that I was in LA. Seemed like I had to drive a long distance no matter what so I decided to go on Monday because out of the whole week they were parked the closes to me, in downtown LA near Little Tokyo. It was still a good 50min drive without traffic. But on Sunday night I wasn’t sure if I reeeeaally wanted to wake up early for the drive.

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1) Please state your name, name your food truck, the type of food you will be serving and where in LA will the truck make it stops?
Matt: Name: Matthew Chernus. Food Truck Name: Grill ‘ Em All. Type of Food: Awesome burgers, awesome sides of stuff like truffle fries and hand rolled tator tots. Location: Your stomach! HAHAHAHA! Great answer!
Ryan: I am the one they call The Great Tyrant of Gastronome, but you can call me Ryan. We stop only to do the bidding of the hungry masses…which is frequent and all over Los Angeles.

2) When and how did you come up with the idea of serving food in a truck and how did you decide on your menu? Besides the heavy metal theme, what makes your truck unique?
Matt: Truck? We don’t serve food from a truck, that would be too pedestrian. We serve food from our lovely chariot. The food can only be as good as the chamber it comes from and ours is the queen of the ball. The ball of destruction. You ask questions of uniqueness and I answer that all is unique when it comes from the belly of this beast we call hunger.
Ryan: Well, I have been a professional cook for over ten years now and I’ve taken my knowledge of gourmet cuisine and brought it to the most amazing canvas in my mind, burgers. The menu was easy; it’s the twist I have been bringing to backyard barbeques for years now. It’s the warm blanket you throw over yourself on a cold Winter’s night after one to many goblets of grog.

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