John Birdsall

Are SF State students finally going to be able to buy food from trucks like Little Green Cyclo?

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Molly Decoudreaux/Facebook

Voodoo Van's Phil Stefani (left) and Seth Stowaway showing off their customer service.

​"Our whole goal is to take what food trucks are to another level," says Phil Stefani, aka FlexXBronco's lead guitarist and owner of the new Cosmic American Voodoo Van. How so? "Through image, attitude, and style," Stefani responds, "and through our love of food and our take on fashion and how we're marketing ourselves."

The van announced its presence on Eater in late December, and has been making sporadic appearances -- Rickshaw Stop one night, Monarch another -- while in the final stages of getting all its permits in Alameda and San Francisco counties. Stefani's more of the svengali behind the truck rather than its executive chef; he's working with Guy Thunderbird, a FlexXBronco bandmate, and Seth Stowaway.

"Our plan is to bring food trucks to music venues," Stefani says. "People get hungry and a lot of the restaurants don't stay open that late, or don't serve good food. My band is playing the Independent March 1, and I'd like to have the food truck parked there for that event -- and I'm really looking forward to getting involved in Coachella and Outside Lands."

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Éire Trea/Facebook

Yes, you read that right: Irish-Eritrean.

​Alan Hyland, who originally comes from a small town near Galway, had spent the past couple of years bouncing around the idea of starting up a food truck specializing in Irish food -- "sort of like a chippie," he explains, the kind of food stand you find parked outside the bars, filling up drinkers mid-session. More >>

Gil Riego Jr.

This food-delivering arm could belong to you.

​It's sort of -- well, vaguely -- like an episode of San Francisco's Next Top Food Truck. Matt Cohen, founder of the Off the Grid street-food gatherings, is in the process of putting together the lineup for Off the Grid's flagship Friday events at Fort Mason, which will begin again in late March. And they're taking applications for new vendors who are interested in occupying one of the 10 "tented" spaces -- in other words, people who are selling from a stand, not a truck.

"This is our once-a-year opportunity for people thinking about doing something professional with street food," Cohen says. "We want to get people interested in making a nine-month commitment, bringing in decent money, and turning their idea into a real thing."

Off the Grid is looking primarily for people selling food with Asian or Latin flavors -- traditional or tweaked -- and Cohen says he's committed to helping first-timers navigate the regulatory process, just as OtG did last year with the Musubi Kings. "You'll need to work out of an approved commissary [otherwise known as a commercial kitchen] and have your food handling certificate," he advises. For more information on this process, read through SFoodie's "going legit" series from last year. The online application is posted on Off the Grid's website, and the deadline is Friday.

Plan of the site for SoMa Streat Food Park

​Carlos Muela may come from a San Francisco restaurant family, but he didn't foresee owning another restaurant in his future. He was more interested in street food. "I'd been to Portland and saw the street-food pods there, and noticed there was nothing like that here. There's Off the Grid, but those are more like events," Muela says. "And I started hearing about the struggles the trucks were finding when they tried to park on the street. They're trapped -- the city told them it would make it easier for them to open, but then they couldn't find anywhere to sell. So I decided that having a private lot is what the city -- and the trucks -- need."

After 11 months of securing permitting, Muela and his contractors are breaking ground tomorrow on SoMa Streat Food Park, a triangular lot at 346 11th Street, at Division, near Costco and Best Buy. As the plans show, the triangular lot will have spots for nine trucks, shelter for up to 200 diners, lights, and permanent restrooms.

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The Courtyard/Flickr

Most of Portland's food carts group together in "pods."

​As I wrote several weeks ago, despite San Francisco city officials' attempts to help the city's food truck scene grow, the conflicts between brick-and-mortar restaurants downtown and food trucks applying for street-parking permits are intensifying. Trucks attempting to park in downtown Oakland are experiencing a similar push-pull from the city and neighboring businesses. (That's nothing compared to the fights happening in Manhattan.)

For all the public's interest in street food, the only American cities that seem to have fostered thriving food-cart scenes are Austin and Portland. Last week, I contacted city agencies and food truck owners in Portland, trying to get some sense whether there's anything Bay Area cities can do to become more like them. The answer: Probably not.

But it's not for the reasons you might think. Portland street-food vendors do have a few regulatory advantages over Bay Area trucks. A 1996 change in Oregon's health-code regulations was responsible for today's food-cart scene, explained Gregg Abbott, owner of Whiffies Fried Pies and a representative for the Portland Food Cart Operators' Cooperative. Before 1996, he says, any food carts or trucks had to prepare their food in an off-site kitchen, called a "commissary," which California also requires of every food truck and cart on the streets.

If you remember back to the 1990s, espresso carts were everywhere, and in Oregon they successfully argued to the state that they were simply preparing espresso drinks and didn't need a full commissary. The state agreed, dropping the regulation (and, consequently, a big chunk of the carts' operating costs).

Espresso carts faded, but in the middle of the last decade, the owners of food carts with full kitchens began taking advantage of the new rules. Over the past five years, they've proliferated -- first downtown, and then in the neighborhoods -- their growth turbo-charged by the recession. The city reports that, as of December 2011, 696 food carts are operating in Portland, most of them in permanent locations. That's more than double the number of trucks in San Francisco.

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John Birdsall

Curry Up Now has been parking at Bush and Sansome for two years now.

​Yesterday's food feature in the Weekly described the escalating battle between downtown restaurants and food trucks parking on FiDi streets, which began after San Francisco introduced new -- and apparently flawed -- food-truck regulations in March. Last week, I spoke to Akash Kapoor, co-owner of Curry Up Now, whose truck at Bush and Sansome was one of the early arrivals downtown. I talked to Kapoor about competition, being a good neighbor, and how many trucks are too many for the neighborhood.

How long have you been parking in the Financial District now?
We actually purchased a truck that came with a permit two years ago, and we are in the process of getting permits for a new truck. Our hearing is coming up.

What opposition has Curry Up Now received from nearby businesses?
We have received a little, but you know, some of the nearby restaurants that have opened after us don't have too much to say because we were there before them. We're pretty conscious to not serve the same food. One of the reasons we chose the spot we're at now is that there's a Japanese place nearby, and no other restaurants, except a Freshii -- that's the only two restaurants on that block. We try to park in front of Wells Fargo, so there's no restaurant within 50 feet directly in front of there. And fortunately, no one else sells a tikka masala burrito.

In addition, we've encouraged the coffee shop that's next to us to pass out samples to people waiting in line for Curry Up Now. He says his business has gotten better because of us being there. Every couple of months, some restaurant will call the cops on us, and we'll have someone stop by and ask to see our license. Apart from that, relations have been pretty good.

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John Birdsall

The Doc's of the Bay truck.

​As I chronicled in this week's food lead story, the San Francisco Board of Appeals last week struck down two street-parking permits that the Department of Public Works had granted to Kasa's kati roller truck and Doc's of the Bay after an arduous eight-month permitting process. Back in March, Doc's owners Lauren Smith and Zak Silverman camped out in the rain for three days to apply for their top choices for parking spots they wanted to build into a route. The DPW struck down several of their permits during the initial hearing process, and during the Dec. 14 Board of Appeals meeting, downtown restaurants and building managers blocked two more.

The day after the hearing, I spoke to Silverman about San Francisco's new street-food regulations.

SFoodie: So how many permits do you have left after this process?
Silverman: We came away from the hearing with three of our five locations [a twice-a-week spot in the Financial District that remained uncontested, and two weekend nights in the Mission]. Ultimately, we're concerned even for those. Last night was the first time so far that any board in San Francisco has had the opportunity to evaluate the law. We were really discouraged by the DPW's presentation at the hearing, which gave us the sense that the permits we do have are liable to be taken from us at any point based on oversights that make the law rotten.

For instance, the parking clause that says we have to abide by all current and existing parking regulations. [Background: One of the grounds on which the Board of Appeals rejected the permits was that they were multi-hour permits for one-hour parking spots.] That was a known flaw from the get-go, and board member Mike Garcia said that, on those grounds alone, this law should have been fixed before.

We still have a location at Washington Street next to the Transamierca building, but it gives us cause for concern that we can be reported for violating the law and our permit can be revoked. Everyone knows that food trucks are breaking the law by parking at these parking spaces for more than an hour at a time. But that was glossed over in the new law.

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Tamara Palmer

Marina Snetkova bakes on her truck, Cookie Time.

​Marina Snetkova used to wake up at 5 a.m. for her Wall Street job as a day trader for a hedge fund; now she rises at the same time to hop in her truck to start baking.

After losing her job in 2008, Snetkova, who is originally from Latvia, started traveling west with dreams to open a wine bar with desserts and use her skills learned at pastry school. She wound up in San Francisco and, two weeks ago, unveiled a refurbished ice cream truck dubbed Cookie Time.

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Steven Gdula/Bloomsbury

Gobs in their first incarnation (left) and the Gobba Gobba Hey cookbook.

​In his lovely essay "Never Can Say Goodbye," author and food entrepreneur Steven Gdula lays out his decision to stop his Gobba Gobba Hey baking business after 33 months, having faced a crossroads on whether to expand or focus on other pursuits.

Born on the streets of the Mission District in 2009, Gobba Gobba Hey sold "gobs," a "cake-like confection" (Gdula's words) that often got mistaken for whoopie pies, off of a tray. Back home in Pennsylvania, these were almost always of a chocolate variety, filled with plain buttercream, but Gdula utilized the bounty of California produce to create flavors like pistachio orange and lemon thyme.

Newly transplanted to San Francisco from Washington, D.C., Gdula was inspired by emerging street food mavens like the Magic Curry Cart and the Crème Brûlée Cart (brothers Brian and Curtis Kimball) and quickly became a peer. As Gdula writes:

The pace was exciting. It was exhilarating to be a part of a burgeoning movement that was being created daily as other new vendors like myself stepped onto the streets to sell their wares. But it wasn't just the people making the food who were responsible for the new scene. The food bloggers, Yelpers, local media, Twitter followers and even the curious neighbors who came to see what this mobile buffet was all about, all were part of it. We all made this thing happen. And having just relocated to San Francisco several months prior, this was my new community in more ways than one.

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