Farm Cart
Posted by Hillary Brown | February 11th, 2010 | Filed under Carts
As alluded to farther down the page, the Farm Cart of Athens’s Farm 255, a restaurant with its own farm and devoted to local, sustainable eating, is closer to the mark for gourmet food trucks than anything yet established in the metropolis of Atlanta. The cart generally stays parked on the patio of the restaurant (255 W. Washington St., Athens. 706-549-4660), which isn’t open for lunch, enabling both institutions to maximize their business. A few tables and benches are always present, although there’s not much in the way to provide shelter from the elements, and, indeed, the cart has taken the day off occasionally due to severe inclement weather.
The menu, written on a chalkboard (see above for an example), is small but well focused, with six or seven items, some of which change weekly and others that have stuck around so far. Many are vegetarian, but in a way that one hardly notices. The tortilla espagnola (below), which has been on every menu since the cart opened late last year, is a gorgeous fat wedge of frittata, jammed full of vegetables and topped with a schmear of slightly sweet pepper jelly. Seeing Jake O. Francis, whose project Farm Cart is, bring out the whole wheel of tortilla–giant, gorgeous, and golden–is worth arriving early for lunch. Did we mention it’s a mere $4?
One of the most impressive things about Farm Cart is its commitment to low prices, which definitely helps when it’s a cash-only business. If you’re trying to eat more organic or sustainable or local stuff, it’s easy to get sticker shock, including at the restaurant that birthed this cute little trailer, but paying $4-7 for lunch is pretty standard even if you’re filling your piehole with chemicals and horribleness. It’s a smart move to take away that argument and instead guide patrons toward good choices without lecturing them. There’s usually a vegetable soup available (sorrel, broccoli, beet, etc.) and an egg and cheese biscuit. Other offerings have included a lovely cabbage and brussels sprout salad, with thinly shaved radishes, mixed herbs, bacony roasted nuts, and a buttermilk dressing (pictured below); a bowl of bolognese sans pasta, topped with a softly fried egg; and a veggie banh mi that was later corrected to a veggie sandwich due to changes in bread (this anal retentiveness about details is just one of the things we love about the cart; it matters not that no one walking up seemed to know what a banh mi was) that included, in one variant, a large hot dog bun grilled in a panini press.
All offerings come in theoretically compostable containers (although Francis expressed reservations that a home composting system could generate enough heat to do the job), with utensils made from corn, and there are bins on the patio labeled “compost,” “recycling,” and “trash” to encourage proper behavior. Beverage service is limited but does include San Pellegrino Limonata in an icy can. The cart has ventured off the patio from time to time for special events in the area but mostly keeps hours of 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays, plus home-game-Saturday lunch during the college football season. It also tweets the menu weekly. Atlanta, we wish you well, but we’re happy to have our own nascent food cart scene.
