Gator fans, our truck has a regular lunchtime schedule for the most part, aside from an open Monday or Friday here & there.  Our next step is to find some cool dinner spots or special night events.   If you have any ideas, send them to marketing@psrt.com.  I’d love to hear from our fans!   I have a running list we hope to move on, but in the meantime would love some fan suggestions.   See you in the swamp!

Directions on how to find out the Secret:

1.  Go to the truck today (5th & San Fernando, behind city Hall) 6/18/2010 from 11-1:30

2. Order Food

3. Take your ticket, and ask the cashier, “What’s the secret?”

Hello Crawfish Cravers!

As many of you have seen recently, there are two distinct items that have been crossed off the menu of the website: The Lobster Bisque, and Crawfish etouffee.  In an attempt to answer your burning questions: Are they coming back? I would love to answer with a resounding YES! to both, but unfortunately there is some hesitation…

Lobster Bisque, as you know, is a hot soup, and while we agree it is delicious, the 90 and rising weather is keeping us from keeping it in the back of our truck.  But the rumor in the kitchen is that once the temperature drops, our lobster lovers will be elated to find it as a special on the back of the truck! YES, Cajun friends! The Lobster will make a return in the future.

Crawfish, as most of you may or may not know, are DELICIOUS in a way that many other cajun critters are once you add some butter and lemon too them.  You also may or may not know that 90% of America’s crawfish supply comes from… Louisiana.

When the Louisiana Oil spill happened a few months back, we hung our heads in sadness, and reluctantly crossed it off our menu items…. for now.

According to a Press Release from the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, The crawfish supply has been unaffected by the oil spill.  Breathe a sigh of relief friends! the crawfish are A-ok! According to the release, crawfish farmers are working diligently to keep their crawfish counts high and fresh water clean. As long as this is sustainable, our supply of Crawfish should thrive.

In case you are curious, you can read more about the crawfish as they pertain to the oil spill Here: http://wwwprd.doa.louisiana.gov/LaNews/PublicPages/Dsp_PressRelease_Display.cfm?PressReleaseID=2474&Rec_ID=6

Here at Louisiana Territory are overjoyed to hear that in a nearer future, crawfish will be available.  We are not saying there is crawfish just yet (although keep your eyes opened for our special this week) but we can say, we can see the future, and the future has crawfish.

Keep checking back for more LAT Updates! And happy Munching!

Finding high-end eats at LA’s mobile food courts

By John Rogers

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — All those years he was a chef at some of Los Angeles’ priciest restaurants, going head-to-head with rival cooks for that coveted Zagat rating, Dave Danhi was harboring another ambition on the side.

He would put his gourmet grilled cheese sandwich in a truck and go hood-to-hood with fusion taco vendors, crepe wagons, wienermobiles and all other kind of meals-on-wheels bistros. He’d park right next to them and do battle, not for Michelin stars, but for glowing Twitter tweets and Yelp reviews.

So there was the former chef of the Water Grill, a restaurant rated by the Zagat Guide as having the best seafood in Southern California, standing behind the counter of his bright yellow Grilled Cheese Truck on a recent sunny afternoon. To one side of him was The Greasy Wiener Truck offering hand-twisted, New Jersey-style fried hot dogs. Across the way was the Crepe ‘N Around, its kitchen filled with delicacies like chicken pesto crepes prepared by French-trained chef Eileen DeLeoz.

Welcome to the newest trend in eating, where you have to be fast to get to your local food court before the restaurants drive away. But if you are quick enough, you can pick from a variety of increasingly exotic choices, including Danhi’s masterpiece, the cheesy mac and rib, made up of macaroni, sharp cheddar, caramelized onions and a boneless pork rib slapped between two pieces of grilled bread.

Even better, a complete meal at most any such food

truck court will set you back no more than $5 to $10.

“This is definitely not a fad, it is the evolving of the restaurant industry,” says Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association, which for the first time is featuring an exhibit on food trucks at its annual trade show in Chicago this month.

There is an increasing demand, particularly among people 18 to 44, for freshly prepared, restaurant-quality food that can be had quick and cheap, said Riehle.

That was in evidence on a recent sunny day at a makeshift food court that assembles every week near Los Angeles International Airport. There, a half-dozen trucks were clustered in a small parking lot sandwiched between a high-rise office building and a hotel. As a steel drummer played in the background, the two buildings spilled out hungry workers by the hundreds, each of them contemplating what to have for lunch.

“We could see what we wanted when we looked out the window of our office building,” laughed Sandy Castro, who was lined up at the Eat Pharmish Vietnamese food truck.

Ruben Flores had decided to partake of some fusion-style Mexican-Chinese kung pao chicken tacos from the Don Chow taco truck.

“It’s way more adventurous and more cultured than a corporation or a fast-food place like McDonald’s,” he said. “I feel like the people behind making the food really love to do what they’re doing and it’s really an art form what they’re doing.”

The food truck, of course, has had a long if not always proud history. It began life as a noontime fixture at construction sites, where it would herald its arrival by blasting out the melody to “La Cucaracha,” a signal that the roach coach had arrived with its inventory of undrinkable coffee, stale pastries and mystery-meat sandwiches.

The trucks found in today’s mobile food courts are a far cry from that.

Such gathering places are marked by anywhere from a half-dozen to as many as two dozen rolling food kitchens that congregate for lunch or dinner, then drive away once everyone is full. They first made their appearance in downtown Portland, Ore., several years ago, says Brett Burmeister, managing editor of foodcourtsportland.com.

“It began as basically an alternative to the delis in the basements of the corporate buildings downtown,” which he said seemed to specialize in selling bad baloney sandwiches.

Instead, the food trucks offered everything from Thai to Chinese to African and Bosnian food.

“The stuff you’d find at the nice restaurants, that you would spend $25 for, you could get for $5,” Burmeister said.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles high-end taco trucks were clustering up and down busy streets, forming impromptu food courts of their own and encouraging people to follow them on Twitter to learn where they would be.

After fighting parking tickets and going to court to overturn an ordinance that would have forced some of them to move every hour, scores of L.A. truckers joined forces earlier this year to form the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association. They began to approach managers of high-rise office buildings and sponsors of public events to ask that their trucks be allowed to gather in adjacent parking lots.

It’s a trend, Riehle said, that he expects will keep spreading, particularly in cities like New York, Seattle and San Francisco, which already have many fine food trucks of their own.

Although clustering in food courts puts them in direct competition with one another, vendors say the increased foot traffic and the advantage of having customers know where they are on a particular day makes it worthwhile.

If the lines get too long at one truck, said Jamie Radzik, who operates Crepe ‘N Around with his wife, DeLeoz, he’ll see people wander over to a different one and try the food there. He figures that’s helping build brand awareness for everybody.

Meanwhile, the truckers themselves aren’t shy about sampling the competition.

“That’s half the fun,” said Danhi’s partner, chef Michele Grant, as she carried a sack from The Greasy Wiener to The Grilled Cheese Truck.

Hello Cajun Fans!

We have had another busy week at the truck! Not only have we revisited our new friends at Robert’s Bookstore, but we also not 1, not 2, but 4 new sites to visit this week.

We started our week off with a new client, Netgear in Santa Clara.  They were happy to have us (and the gripes we have heard loud and clear, herbivores!)  And our chefs have been busily working away to give you the finest Cajun food your tummies can handle.

Than we went back to old reliable Restaurant Depot and Keypoint Credit Union to see our Favorites and serve up some of our favorites.  And Soon we will venture off to some new locations: Reid-Hill Airport in South San Jose, Jason Stephens Winery in Gilroy, and Great America’s Parking lot!

So where is the gossip??? The title of this week’s post is gator gossip, and that’s what you came for: some good old rumors (even if they were started by us!)

Well, as our little community has spiked over the past few weeks, we are diligently brainstorming how to keep our patrons happy.  So Keep your eyes and ears peeled this weekend when you come visit us at the truck to learn first hand what we have cookin’ up for next week

Oh, and if you get out to the Gator this weekend, you’ll be presently surprised by what you find!

Welcome back!

It has been QUITE an exciting week for LAT! We have made some new friend’s over by San Jose State’s Campus, as well as in our internet!

Robert’s bookstore, which has been known on campus to be quite a lifesaver for the broke college type, has teamed up with our staff to make one heck of a team, nourishing the mind AND body.

Now, when you are on your way to class, work, and get a feeling of hunger pangs, fear not! We are located conveniently where you can get your blue test books, scantrons, and #2 pencils. The best part? You can get a delicious entree for what you might pull out of your car in change, from below the dark void under the seat, where you found the thirty-five cents to get our Scantron.  The crew at Robert’s appreciates you, and would only give you the best, which is why WE are so privileged to work with them.

As well as new friends, we also have made a LOT of new CYBER friends! That’s right, on facebook this week, we have reached our 500 friends mark, and counting! We would LOVE to have more, so start bringing your friends by the truck for our weekly specials, samples, and smiles! We have quite an exciting May coming up, so it feels pretty good to shut the April Chapter with new friends and adventures on the horizon!

Keep chomping, Cajun lovers

~The LAT Crew