Truck Treks: Farm Truck

Welcome back. It sucks a little bit, right? What’s with this snow? Wake up, weather gods. Isn’t it supposed to be spring or something?

Do yourself a favor – don’t jump right back into your WilCaf/Houston/Chipotle grind. Get off campus for an hour or two and try out the fare at one of the treasured trucks rolling around Philly.

This past Monday, suffering from extreme symptoms of spring-break-withdrawal, I pulled layers of sweatshirts over my sunburned cheeks and set out for a miserable run in blustery wind and slush. The only redeeming quality of this excursion was that I conveniently worked my way over to Love Park, where the mucky weather had shortened food truck lines considerably.

I chose a lunch truck that I’d been dying to sample: Farm Truck. The vehicle itself has a distinct flavor. It’s completely decked out in abstract, rainbow graffiti, complete with flying pigs, chicks, flowers, and faces. Even more notably, the truck carries a mobile art gallery in nicer weather. Pieces of art are hung for display on the weathered wood that lines the back of the truck.

The menu rotates regularly based on what’s seasonal and available locally, but favorites such as the black bean burger or the pulled pork brioche sandwich appear often. The list is short, with just four to five main items, but choosing amongst the handful was still a task. Every description was sophisticated, fresh, and extremely palatable.

I went with another one of their most popular picks: the blackened chicken sandwich. Salt and pepper pulled chicken stuffed into a ciabatta roll, topped off with carrot-cucumber-sesame slaw and smoked paprika aioli. The bread was pleasantly warm and soaked up the aioli nicely. The slaw was refreshing and appealing in color. However, I found fault with the construction of the sandwich. The slaw was added last, meaning it only cameoed in the first few bites of each sandwich half. Beyond that, it was all chicken. Perhaps it is the ex-vegetarian in me speaking out, but if it’s possible, this chicken sandwich was almost too chicken-y. I would have appreciated a better chicken-slaw-aioli balance.

Nonetheless, the sandwich was hearty enough to be worth the $8 I paid and the 5k I ran. Farm Truck’s concept is spot on in this era of sustainable cooking and I have to taste the compost cookies I passed up this week, so I will certainly be back to try other items on the menu.

Oh, and if you were curious, I most definitely did not run all the way home. My food baby and I SEPTA’d our way back to campus. I’ll run both ways when the sun comes out, promise.