By Bonnie Burch | The Tennessean
Hunter Sympson, who spent his youth in and around Brentwood, has returned to the area to put his gourmet-style food on wheels.
Sympson, 31, has just rolled out the Mobile Chef, a 25-foot mobile kitchen that serves everything from a fire-and-ice grilled chicken salad to mustard-rubbed salmon to tri-tacos with a Southern-style mango chutney.
“My dad owned an insurance business for 30 years at Mallory and Moores Lane. I was born a mile away from his home and office,” Sympson said. “So I hope to be all around Brentwood and Williamson County soon. It’s basically untouched territory for what I’m doing.”
What makes his cuisine unique among the food truck craze is that he prepares and cooks all the meals from raw ingredients on-site, which officially classifies his business as a mobile kitchen. A Brazilian barbecue rotisserie grill provides the heat for many of the dishes.
“It’s a restaurant on wheels. We’re not making it somewhere else and then putting it on the truck and then reheating it,” he said.
He has a food permit and the Mobile Chef received a 98 score from the Williamson County Health Department.
Truck will be at farmers market this weekend
Although he attended Brentwood High School, Sympson graduated from a school in Florida after his family relocated there. He’s been traveling a lot since moving out of Tennessee.
Sympson attended his first culinary school in Baton Rouge, La., and then graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando, Fla. During his apprenticeship for a large Hilton Hotel in Hawaii, he learned how to provide enough food to suit all types of palettes at banquets that sometimes topped 3,000 people.
After returning to Florida to work for an upscale restaurant, Sympson noticed a proliferation of mobile kitchen businesses in the area, and that got him thinking about starting something similar one day.
He returned to Tennessee about six years ago and worked as a chef for the Hilton Downtown Nashville.
“That’s where I learned to prepare from different types of menus that could accommodate banquets to high-end weddings,” he said. “When the customer sits down, you need to know a vast array of things to cook. That’s why I’m not really locked in to a certain type of cuisine.”
The Mobile Chef has a regular bi-weekly gig. Fans can catch stop by for brunch or lunch from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on alternating Saturdays at the Franklin Farmers Market, behind The Factory at Franklin. The next opportunity is this weekend.
Hunter Sympson, who spent his youth in and around Brentwood, has returned to the area to put his gourmet-style food on wheels.
Sympson, 31, has just rolled out the Mobile Chef, a 25-foot mobile kitchen that serves everything from a fire-and-ice grilled chicken salad to mustard-rubbed salmon to tri-tacos with a Southern-style mango chutney.
“My dad owned an insurance business for 30 years at Mallory and Moores Lane. I was born a mile away from his home and office,” Sympson said. “So I hope to be all around Brentwood and Williamson County soon. It’s basically untouched territory for what I’m doing.”
What makes his cuisine unique among the food truck craze is that he prepares and cooks all the meals from raw ingredients on-site, which officially classifies his business as a mobile kitchen. A Brazilian barbecue rotisserie grill provides the heat for many of the dishes.
“It’s a restaurant on wheels. We’re not making it somewhere else and then putting it on the truck and then reheating it,” he said.
He has a food permit and the Mobile Chef received a 98 score from the Williamson County Health Department.
Truck will be at farmers market this weekend
Although he attended Brentwood High School, Sympson graduated from a school in Florida after his family relocated there. He’s been traveling a lot since moving out of Tennessee.
Sympson attended his first culinary school in Baton Rouge, La., and then graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando, Fla. During his apprenticeship for a large Hilton Hotel in Hawaii, he learned how to provide enough food to suit all types of palettes at banquets that sometimes topped 3,000 people.
After returning to Florida to work for an upscale restaurant, Sympson noticed a proliferation of mobile kitchen businesses in the area, and that got him thinking about starting something similar one day.
He returned to Tennessee about six years ago and worked as a chef for the Hilton Downtown Nashville.
“That’s where I learned to prepare from different types of menus that could accommodate banquets to high-end weddings,” he said. “When the customer sits down, you need to know a vast array of things to cook. That’s why I’m not really locked in to a certain type of cuisine.”
The Mobile Chef has a regular bi-weekly gig. Fans can catch stop by for brunch or lunch from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on alternating Saturdays at the Franklin Farmers Market, behind The Factory at Franklin. The next opportunity is this weekend.
