Serving up freshness and fun

The parking lot at St. Albert Centre was the last place where I expected to go down memory lane. But that’s what happened one recent, hot and sunny afternoon, as I headed to the mall to chat with the owners of a new food truck in town.

DaVinci Gelato Originale had just opened three weeks earlier, and its owners, a mother-and-son team, make and sell their own gelato.

Mostly made from milk, cream, sugar and all-natural flavours, gelato is the novel and creamy Italian mother to North America’s ice cream. And in Germany, where I’m from, every small city has one or more cafĂ©s that serve it exclusively, thus leaving many pleasant childhood memories.

Germany is also where Felix Irnich and his mother Yvonne have their roots. So naturally, when Felix took his girlfriend on a tour of Cologne earlier this year, they stopped for gelato. Jenna Woldenga says she liked it so much, they decided to sell it back home in St. Albert.

“You come back to North America, and it’s just not the same,” she says. “But we realized that some people call their ice cream gelato even though it’s not gelato. So we often have to tell people it’s European or Italian.”

It’s no longer surprising to see food trucks offer a variety of dishes from around the world. That doesn’t mean the days of greasy hot dogs and French fries are gone. But there’s more competition now. And St. Albert’s food truck scene, though small compared to Edmonton’s, is a good example.

There’s Fab Food on Four, where customers can choose from a menu that includes both German Spaetzle (homemade egg noodles) and taco-stuffed, baked potatoes. Or Dedo’s Food Truck, whose Syrian owners offer a range of Middle Eastern meat dishes, but also cook vegetarian and gluten-free foods.

The variety of dishes is what makes the trucks so attractive to customers, says Mack Male, organizer and creator of What the Truck?!, a monthly event in Edmonton that gathers food trucks from all over the region.

Male never owned a food truck. But he was among the first to see the potential for a ‘movement’ in Edmonton. On a trip to San Francisco in 2010, he and co-organizer Sharon Yeo had stumbled upon a dozen food trucks that “served street food with a side of music.”

They loved the experience and decided to create a similar event in Edmonton. What the Truck?! launched a year later and quickly grew from seven trucks and a few hundred visitors, to 70 trucks and over 10,000 visitors.

Male says food trucks have now become “a bit of a trend” in Edmonton. People know about them from TV shows on the Food Network, or tried them in other cities. But more importantly, the trucks get people outdoors and serve up some “pretty creative food.”

“It’s not about hot dogs and mini doughnuts and a lot of the concession stuff,” he says. “A lot of the food trucks, especially the more popular ones, make good quality food. And often they have chefs behind the counter who are doing something that could be considered restaurant quality.”

But why do hobby cooks and professional chefs suddenly prefer to work in a kitchen the size of a closet instead of a full-sized restaurant?

Tarek Selek, who operates Dedo’s Food Truck with his wife Ranya Abu Jaib and brother-in-law A.J., says he likes it because it costs less, and he’s closer to his customers.

Before he joined his family in Canada, Selek ran a restaurant in Malaysia with his brother. It was a big operation that employed over 50 people. But there was never time to chat, he says.

They already had the idea for a food truck years earlier, when they tried different street vendors on vacation in Europe and the U.S., he says. So they decided to create a smaller family business with Dedo’s in Canada.

“When you only work inside a restaurant, nobody sees you,” he says. “But we love to speak to people and the food truck gives us that opportunity. You get direct feedback, and talking with the customers, it’s fun.”

The workload is about the same, though. The family gets up early in the morning and starts preparing the food, buying bread and cutting vegetables. Then they have a two-hour window to serve lunch.

Selek works the grill, while A.J. prepares sandwiches for about 150 customers a day. On hot days, it can get up to 32 degrees inside the truck and Selek drinks about 10 bottles of water to stay hydrated.

Afterwards, they clean the truck, drive back home, buy fresh meat to marinate over-night, and wash their aprons. A normal workday is about eight hours long but it can get longer when they serve food at family gatherings and office parties at night, he says.

Since much of the work depends on the weather, they also work seven days a week in the summer. Food trucks operate for about six months a year, when it’s warm and customers want to spend time outside.

That doesn’t leave much time for a family vacation but it’s still fun, says Selek.

“The most important thing for me, even when I am tired, is that people like the food and are happy,” he says.

The feedback has also been a welcome surprise for Felix Irnich and Jenna Woldenga. It inspired many new flavours for their gelato, such as mango and coconut, they say. They also don’t have to wait to find out how their business is doing, he says.

“People on the street, what better feedback could there be,” says Irnich.

The couple’s schedule is much the same as Selek’s. They sell their gelato for about eight hours a day, while Yvonne Irnich makes new batches at home. They also cater to private events in the evening.

The family has a background in construction but almost everyone is somehow involved with the food truck now. His mom even went to Cologne in May to study making gelato, says Irnich.

Unlike Dedo’s, DaVinci Gelato is not meant to stay a food truck-only business forever, thought. Irnich hopes to “go big” one day, with a German-Italian-style ice cream cafĂ© in the winter months. They’ve already been in talks with some big malls in the area.

“It just doesn’t exist here,” he says.