By Neil Offen | The Herald Sun
DURHAM — The menu wasn’t just a la carte, it was a la truck.
It ranged from appetizers like a house salad from Pie Pushers to entrees like jerk chicken sliders from Will & Pops to desserts like vanilla dream cupcakes from Daisy Cakes.
“What a choice,” said John Andriessen, one of the several hundred hungry eaters who jammed the Durham Central Park pavilion Sunday night for what was billed as the biggest — so far — local food truck rodeo. “This is incredible. I don’t know where to start.”
Aileen Flynn, picknicking with her family on the green adjacent to the pavilion, decided to start at one end, with the first of a dozen or so trucks.
“This is so much better than cooking at home,” Flynn said. “You have a huge selection and you don’t have to clean up after yourself.”
On a hot and sunny summer night, the trucks were lined up under the pavilion like little elephants, tail to trunk. Some of them had arrived before 4 p.m. while the hungry eaters arrived before 5 — even though the rodeo didn’t officially start until 5:30.
“You want to get here early, to check everything out,” said Amy Weissbecker, who was checking out the Grilled Cheese Bus. “I love food trucks and I wanted to see if there were any ones here that I didn’t know. I also didn’t have anything else to do.”
Weissbecker said the trucks were testament to what a hip place Durham had become.
“Other places have a few food trucks,” she said. “But no place else has this many. Where else can you find all these different kinds of food and you don’t even have to tip a waiter?”
While the food truck rodeo was a bonanza for hungry eaters, it was also a pretty good deal for the trucks and their foodie entrepreneurs.
“Why are we here?” said Ashley Wineberger, who works in the Will & Pops truck. “We heard it was going to be a good time. And it is.”
