Food Truck Nerd Podcast Episode 41
This week I talk about the web site redesign, some scary regulatory developments in various cities, and an opportunity here at home. In the recordings we see (hear?) the Treatbot Factory soft launch through the eyes (ears?) of food truck newbies, and hear from the Food Truck Godmother herself.

• This is old news but I hadn’t shared it before. Facebook only shares a food truck’s page’s status updates with a subset of that truck’s followers unless the truck pays for greater exposure. Read all about it in “Has Facebook Jumped the Shark for Food Trucks?” on Mobile-Cuisine.com.
• The Seinfeld Soup Nazi food truck is real, folks. What next? The Cosby Jell-o® Pudding Pop-mobile?
• Chicago, New Orleans, and Orange County, CA are added to the list of local governments that are making it tougher for trucks to operate in their areas.
• The City of Sunnyvale is reviewing its food truck policies now. The good news is you can give them your input today. Go right now and take their survey to guide them to rational policy. Sunnyvale resident Dan Hugo will thank you for it.
• Zagat published their list of the best food trucks in San Francisco and the East Bay. Congratulations to the top five! We eagerly await their review of trucks in the South Bay because, you know, we’re not San Francisco.
• “A Sporting Chance” on the blog Tangerine & Cinnamon gives us a peek at the food scene at the London Olympics. Sadly there are no nosh lorries in the Olympic Village.
• Event news:
  • The Food Truck Mafia have ended the Newpark Street Eats events in Newark…
  • …but they have added a new weekly event: Pleasanton Street Eats, lunchtime on Fridays.
  • In August Moveable Feast will be starting a limited run of weekly events at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. Stay tuned for details.
  • San Jose Night Market is in full swing. I’ll have a lot more to say about that in a future episode.
• SanJose.com has been running a regular feature profiling local food trucks, most recently Eat on Monday.
• Read all about We Sushi in Santa Clara Weekly.
• Treatbot was included in Self’s list of the 5 hottest (?!) ice cream trucks.
• Veggie Truckin’ Laura has compiled a Pinterest board of food trucks she likes for your perusing pleasure.
• Trucks new and new-to-me:
  • Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme have launched a new truck concept called Pacific Coast Highway, serving surfer food like burgers and Baja tacos. Henceforth it shall be known as P.S.R.T. P.C.H.
  • TasteeBytes SJ is a new truck slinging over-the-top items like slaw dogs, chicken wings, and pulled pork, slathered in Tastee Sauce.
  • I caught up with the new breakfast-all-day truck Banjara Bistro and had a second lunch of a French Chicken mini crêpe and found it tender and elegant.
  • I finally tried a Dead Dogs hot dog in Los Gatos, and I’m happy to report that while the hearse-and-coffin decor did force me to face my own mortality, it didn’t detract at all from the frankly delicious frank.
  • Little Chef Truck is an experimental mobile offshoot of the non-moveable Little Chef Counter in San Pedro Square Market in San Jose. I enjoyed their Chimichurri flank steak skewers, but I fear the poutine they threaten to unleash on the Bay Area. Look, if they wanted me to eat it, they wouldn’t have called it “curds.”

Recordings

• At the Treatbot Factory soft launch at San Pedro Square Market in San Jose, I waylaid a couple who had wandered over from the Blush Raw Bar to see what all the commotion was about. Recorded June 16, 2012.
• Then Paulette, Clayton, and I chatted with the woman of the hour, Christine Sebastian of Treatbot.