A food trailer is an element without which it is difficult to imagine the infrastructure of a city. Mobile catering is gaining in popularity and offers not only classic dishes and fast food, but also more sophisticated cuisine from different corners of the world. We can get really exquisite dishes in a food truck and they take much less time to prepare than in restaurants.
The first steps of mobile catering
The origins of food trucks date back to the 19th century, when food was offered from horse-drawn carriages. The idea came from Walter Scott, who built the first mobile eatery to serve sandwiches and coffee to journalists. In 1894, sausages began to be sold in food trucks, and their popularity grew among academic groupings such as Yale and Harvard. The origins of food trailers involved the ability to purchase simple meals to satiate one's appetite quickly and cheaply. Food trucks of their time even took the form of field kitchens serving food to soldiers.
Evolution of street food service
Throughout the 20th century, both the appearance of food trucks and the menus changed intensively. It was only before the Second World War that the first truck shaped like a sausage in a bun was built to sell hot dogs. Over the years, they began to offer, among other things, the popular Mexican tacos and burgers. The ‘food truck’ term appeared on Wikipedia in 2007, when the popularity of mobile catering began to grow rapidly. A few years earlier, the ‘Oscars of street food’ had been organised in New York, awarding prizes to the best mobile restaurants. With the growing popularity of cooking programmes and interest in healthy eating, people began to look for more than just a quick meal.
Present-day food trucks, or cuisine at the highest level
Today's food trucks obviously offer fast food and in many of them you will find the classic fries, hot dogs or burgers. However, there is no shortage of those that offer refined dishes instead of fast food, which do not differ in quality from those served in the best restaurants. Food trends have changed considerably over the years and we are increasingly turning to slow food and comfort food solutions. Mobile catering is based on diversity, and in a caravan we can even get Poznań's pyry z gzikiem (baked potatoes with a cottage cheese sauce) or Podhale oscypki (smoked sheep's cheese). All the food is prepared in front of our eyes, so we can be sure that the cuisine is run at the highest level.
The evolution of food trucks is still ongoing and it is actually difficult to predict when it will end. Year after year, mobile gastronomy surprises us with new proposals and refined dishes, which means that we often prefer to go for lunch in a trailer rather than in a local restaurant where we are forced to wait longer for our food. Food trucks are an integral part of the modern culinary scene, offering flavours from around the world.
