Midtown Lunch

This is quite possibly the greatest food truck story I’ve seen in the 4+ years I’ve been doing Midtown Lunch:  On Tuesday Eater broke the story that the Flying Pig truck (one of our favorites in L.A.) was going to be starring in a porno with Ron Jeremy called “The Flying Pink Pig”.  Amazing right?  Not so much says the Owner of the Flying Pig, who is afraid this might be bad publicity for the brick and mortar he’s about to open in Little Tokyo.  He told Squid Ink that he had no idea they were going to be using the truck in a porno film, apparently thinking the film was a “romantic comedy”.  Although that story becomes hard to believe once you see the trailer.  (If the cheesy construction workers weren’t a dead giveaway, than the half naked women making out in your truck should have been!) Regardless of what the owner of the Flying pig might think this is a clear victory for those of us who have been saying for years that food trucks should make love not war.  And the best news is, two sequels are already in the can.  [photo via Eater]

I have a confession to make.  When I first moved here from New York back in February I was completely overwhelmed by the street food scene here.  NYC has its fair share of new school trucks, and Midtown Lunch has enthusiastically covered them since their numbers began to explode back in 2007.  But what’s going on in Midtown is nothing compared to the scene here in Los Angeles.  As everybody knows, it’s far from easy to vend here… but if you can believe it, it’s even harder in New York.  Licenses are hard to come by, and permits are capped, so the waiting list to legally open a food truck in any of the five boroughs is a mile long. Don’t believe me?  Kogi, arguably the most successful street vending operation to date, looked into opening in NYC and decided it was too difficult.  Here, parking might be tough in some high density areas, but renting a truck is super easy (there is no Road Stoves equivalent in NYC) and there are no caps placed on permits so there is no limit to the number of new trucks that can (and have) hit the streets here in L.A.

The Flying Pig Truck, which will be one year old in October, is one of those trucks that I would have been super excited about had it opened in Midtown.  Or if I had been living in L.A. when it first hit the streets.  On one hand the choice between pork and anything else is no choice at all for this (lower case) jew.  On the other hand, Asian tacos and Asian sliders are not as exactly the ground breaking menu item they once were here in SoCal.   And then I read this blog post a few weeks ago, saying their pork buns were “ripped from the Momofuku playbook”.

Well, that’s all I needed to hear.

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