Vendor Gallery: Hector Santiago
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | May 6th, 2010 | Filed under Carts
During last Sunday’s James Brown Bash in the Old Fourth Ward, one of Atlanta’s greatest chefs dished out freshly cooked burritos wrapped in newspapers.
Hector Santiago of Pura Vida on Highland Avenue is that rare chef who can go high and low with the same passion, talent, and energy. His joining the street food movement is wonderful news!
“El Burropollo is inspired by the burritos I used to eat in my uncle’s restaurant, Burritos Robles in El Paso,” Santiago told us. “Yes…my uncle is a Puerto Rican cooking burritos (he’s been married to my Mexican aunt for as long as I can remember)….He first started Burritos Robles about 40 years ago in Ciudad Juarez., then moved his business to El Paso.”
“They were the hottest burritos I had ever eaten,” Santiago remembers, “and what I love about them is that it was 95% meat and a little garnish. I serve mine with sauces to tame it down but in El Paso they do the contrary…they are truly Chile Heads! ”
Vowing to keep the menu simple, with the addition of a fried item so he can recycle his oil into diesel to help keep his cost down, Santiago is deadset on going mobile.
Gracias to Hector and pura vida, y’all!
[photos by Karl Injex]
Vendor Gallery: Deb and Becky Tokich
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | April 26th, 2010 | Filed under Carts
No, you aren’t seeing double!
The Tokich sisters, who will soon make their debut as the only twins among the new generation of local street vendors, have been in Atlanta for 15 years. “We live to eat & live to cook.,” they recently told us, adding that they have been cooking since they were 11.
After years of listening to their friends insisting they share their food with the masses, they are finally working on doing just that. “Having a street food truck/cart is the ideal way for us to introduce our food,” they wrote.
Their dream: “Working together, cooking together, sharing our food with people.”
Their concept: Mouthwatering Cubans
Their method: “We slow roast our pork in our homemade mojo sauce.”
Their future: “different fillings for Cubans–i.e., Turkey Cuban, Veggie–all hot pressed on Cuban bread!!”
Those spirited twins have just the right attitude (“We love love nothing more than watching people eat our food–seriously!!! The noises & faces make us happy”) and their soon-to-be-famous Cuban sandwiches look too great for words.
Vendor Gallery: Steven Carse
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | April 7th, 2010 | Filed under Carts
Meet Atlanta native Steven Carse, a.k.a. the King of Pops, who manufactures handcrafted popsicles in a range of intriguing gourmet flavors. Part of the business is wheeling his cute pushcart (definitely a Mexican one, but with a current Atlanta permit) back and forth between the Irwin Street Market in the Old Fourth Ward where he makes them and his street corner across from Manuel’s Tavern and Videodrome where he sells them.
We shot the breeze with the King, ate one of his pops (yummy strawberry rhubarb), saw him make a couple of sales, and drove by him a couple of hours later returning to his home base, pushing the cart uphill and looking way hot.
Carse, who may be the only blue-eyed blond paletas vendor/manufacturor in Atlanta, has the blessing of the Georgia Department of Agriculture, and the City of Atlanta Permitting Department sold him a permit for vending on private property. There is a limit to what he can do, but one of his plans for growing his business is to join forces with other food carts and trucks rolling out in force.
Vendor Gallery: Cassandra Loftlin
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | April 1st, 2010 | Filed under Carts
Cassandra Loftlin was raised in Augusta, Georgia, and, because she grew up “during the rise of the original super chefs, Julia Child, Pierre Franey, James Beard, Craig Claiborne, and many, many other greats,” her first memories of food revolve around her mother and grandmother “creating and reinventing southern specialties with new-found ingredients and cooking techniques popularized during this renewed interest in cooking and in regional cuisine.”
To this day, she says, her favorite meal consists of “Braised Lamb Chops, courtesy of Julia Child, House Corn Bread, created by my great-grand mother, Grace Wimberly, Black-eyed Peas and Butter Beans mixed together, prepared in only a way my grandmother can make them, and Orange Cinnamon Pekoe Iced Tea, one of my mother’s special blends of tea.”
Cassandra has always enjoyed cooking and after several other career pursuits, she took a job a prep cook for a small catering firm in Atlanta. “It was in this small, family owned catering business that my love of cooking matured into a passion,” she says, and she embarked on her career as a chef. For the last four years, she has owned and operated a catering firm of her own. She recently became involved in the Atlanta Street Food Coalition because she is in the process of purchasing a food truck for use during catering events.
“In order to maximize the investment in the truck, part of my business plan is to prepare and serve lunch and dinner out of the truck on city streets when it is not being used for catered events,” she writes. “The prohibition against preparing food on the truck and limiting a vendor to two locations has proven to be very problematic for me, as well as other food truck vendors.”
Her recent participation in the Urban Picnic/Street Food Advocacy Day was much appreciated by many, including both Mayor Kasim Reed and Councilman Kwanza Hall, both of whom stopped at her table decked with fresh daffodils and enjoyed a taste of her Caesar pesto chicken salad made with romaine lettuce, Springer Mountain Farm chicken, parmigiano reggiano, and a homemade Caesar pesto dressing.
Vendor Gallery: Westside Creamery
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | March 22nd, 2010 | Filed under Carts
As a child, Maggie always wanted to visit an ice cream truck, but the colorful, singing Good Humor vans didn’t service the isolated farm she grew up on in rural south Georgia. Now, from her home on Atlanta’s Westside, she could “throw a rock and hit the local ice cream truck depot” but is less interested in prepackaged drumsticks and rocket pops than she once was.
Instead, she’s taken matters into her own hands, churning innovative, velvety ice creams and punchy sorbets for friends and family and, soon, for the rest of Atlanta and beyond. Maggie and partner Greg are “a civic-minded food-loving couple of local young professionals” who can’t wait to deliver their virtuous frozen delights to Atlanta’s streets and into its freezers. “World domination seems likely, ” they write, “with seasonal, inspired flavors like burnt orange caramel, roasted black grape with olive oil, and brown butter with–wait for it!–candied bacon.”
Variety, delicious as it is, is only part of what’s important to Maggie and Greg. Each small batch of their hand-crafted ice cream is made “with loving care using fruits, vegetables, and herbs plucked from local farms, eggs borrowed from urban chickens, and milk generously provided by Georgia dairy cows. All this, so that a dose of Westside Creamery’s luxurious frozen stuff–be it scooped into a cup, stuffed in a cone, or sandwiched between homemade cookies–satisfies not just your inner truck-chasing child, but your grown-up, earth-friendly locavore too.”
Look for Westside Creamery scooping at local farmer’s markets this summer and in stores near you soon.
