Mobility, Social Media, and Urban Hipness
Lok Siu
Food Trucks
Just as I turned into the parking lot, I suddenly realized I had no idea what Jae Kim, the founder of Chi’Lantro Food Trucks, looked like, and I had forgotten to ask for some mark of identification when we confirmed our meeting. But without giving it a second thought, I rushed toward the front door of Asia Café, a major Austin, Texas, landmark for delicious northern Chinese food. There stood a young man in his late twenties or maybe early thirties, wearing dark blue jeans, a stylish pullover sweater, and black sneakers. He had his face down, looking intently at his iPhone and furiously tapping his thumbs on the screen. He did not resemble the typical image of a restaurant owner, if there is such a thing. He was young, much younger than one would expect a success- ful food truck entrepreneur to be. Still, I suspected he was Jae Kim. I asked tentatively, “Jae?” He looked up immediately, giving me that familiar slightly surprised and confused look. I suppose I do not look like a typical university professor, either. In any case, the feeling of surprise was mutual; neither of us fit the stereotypical image of our profession. To avoid any awkward silence, I quickly introduced myself, and he noted that Asia Café was full (the rain had not kept people away) and suggested that we go somewhere quieter instead. We walked down a short way to a cupcake bakery, and with coffee and cup- cakes in hand, we sat down at one of the tables.
My meeting with Jae Kim was a result of my ongoing interest in Asian Latino food. In the late 1990s in New York City, I was introduced to the Chi- nese Latino restaurants1 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Having done research on diasporic Chinese in Latin America, I was fascinated with restau- rants that had names like “La Caridad 78,” “Flor De Mayo,” or “Dinastia China,” which had self-consciously named their cuisine Chinese-Latin, or Spanish and Chinese, or Comida China y Criolla.2 When I moved to Austin, Texas, a few years ago, I missed the juicy and flavorful pollo Asado and the tangy sweet and
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succulent plátanos maduros of those Chinese Latino restaurants. Fortunately, one day during the “Cultural Politics of Food” course I was teaching at Uni- versity of Texas at Austin, a student mentioned her favorite local food truck, Chi’Lantro, which serves “Korean tacos.” My eyes lit up in my excitement at the emergence of yet another “Asian Latino” food concept, this one drawing on Korean and Mexican traditions. Soon thereafter, I visited Chi’Lantro and had my first taste of bulgogi beef tacos. Think of thinly sliced beef—marinated in a sauce made of garlic, soy sauce with a hint of sugar, and sesame seeds—grilled and then wrapped in a warm corn tortilla and topped with minced onions, thinly chopped cabbage, cilantro, and hot sauce. Absolutely delicious! With those first tacos I was hooked, and since then have been eating Korean tacos and exploring the food truck phenomenon.
Food trucks seem to have exploded on the national stage in the late 2000s. While the previous generation of food trucks was quite diverse, in general they were perceived as offering cheap, “authentic” (often read as “ethnic” or “low culture”) food consumed primarily by the working class or some- times thought to be the only option available in the area. Now, although food trucks still have a reputation for being affordable, they have been trans- formed into something modern, hip, cutting-edge, and mainstream. In this chapter I try to make sense of how food trucks, once situated at the margins of food culture, have become so popular and widely embraced in the past few years. I explore the reemergence and growing presence of food trucks in American society and ask, What cultural and social forces made food trucks such a popular phenomenon? What kinds of desires and impulses drive and are reflected in the proliferation of food trucks? Who are the new owners, workers, and consumers of these new food trucks? My findings are drawn from the preliminary ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in 2011 on the “Asian fusion” food trucks Chi’Lantro and Peached Tortilla, both based in Austin, Texas. By “Asian fusion,” I am referring to food created from at least two culinary traditions, one from Asia (Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, and the like). Whereas Chi’Lantro was inspired by Korean and Mexican food tra- ditions, Peached Tortilla traces its roots to various parts of Asia and South- ern (American) food. What follows is a collage of ethnographic vignettes that bring together some of the disparate forces that enabled the emergence of this new food truck culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I suggest that the particular constellation of changes in media technologies, food entertainment, and the national economy has played a critical role in laying the groundwork for the proliferation, as well as the explosive recep- tion, of food trucks in the past few years.