1 week Ago
Crowds turn out for the opening night of Congdon’s After Dark last May. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald The season’s new food trucks and trailers are a harbinger of warmer weather in the food world, popping up like so many flowers (if flowers smelled like steamed buns, empanadas and cheeseburgers). It’s still very early in the season, with more food truck and trailer operators expected to apply for licensing over the next several weeks.
The City of Portland has issued licenses to 21 food trucks and push carts so far (it had 46 licensed operations last May). Meanwhile, Congdon’s After Dark food truck park in Wells, which launches May 22, has lined up 21 trucks already. Here’s a preview of four new Portland and South Portland food trucks and trailers this summer, including what they’re offering and where they plan to operate.
Barkada This food truck specializing in Filipino food aims to launch in Portland in June. Married chef-owners Nicole and Ben Bowers also plan to open their Filipino fast-casual restaurant — a build-your-own bowl concept, also called Barkada — at 25 Pearl St., also in Portland, this fall.
The truck will offer some of the same bowls they’ll serve at the restaurant, featuring classic Filipino foods like lechon (roast pork), bistek (Filipino beef steak) and chicken adobo. The truck will also sell pulled pork melts, lumpia (Filipino spring rolls) and “fiesta bags” — Doritos loaded up with cheese, Filipino meats and tangy calamansi aioli. For dessert, the Barkada truck will serve an ube (purple yam) ice cream cookie sandwich.
“It’s not a very large truck, so we’re keeping it kind of simple, and just highlighting these Filipino flavors,” said Ben Bowers, who expects Barkada will make appearances this season around downtown Portland, on the Eastern Promenade and at breweries and special events. Bowers met Nicole, a native of the Philippines, in New York City while they both attended the Institute of Culinary Education. She comes from a family of restaurateurs in the Philippines, and the couple spent a year living and working there after culinary school.
The Bowerses are teamed up with their business partner and Ben’s longtime friend Luka Dow on the Barkada truck and restaurant ventures. “Barkada means a group of friends,” Bowers explained. “That’s the idea behind the name — we’re all coming together to make something great.
” For more information, go to barkadamaine on Instagram . Hank & Artie’s Chef-owner Sean Telo has been holding pop-ups of Hank & Artie’s — named for his two young sons, Henry and Arthur — around Portland and South Portland since last June. The success of those events led him to take things a step further with a Hank & Artie’s food trailer that he plans to operate on the patio outside Argenta Brewing Company’s Lager Saloon on 82 Hanover St.
in Portland starting in mid-May. The Hank & Artie’s food trailer, still under construction, is expected to launch in May at Argenta Brewing Company. Photo courtesy of Hank & Artie’s Telo said Hank & Artie’s is all about “locally sourced fast food that’s really well done.
We’re trying to focus on being simple and good at one thing, which is burgers and fries.” Telo’s smash burgers ($13-$15) use grass-fed beef from Cold Spring Ranch in New Portland and Japanese shokupan milk buns from Little Spruce Baking Co. in Biddeford, while Green Thumb Farm in Fryeburg supplies potatoes for his beef tallow-cooked fries.
Other Hank & Artie’s items include fries topped with chili con carne and queso blanco, a chopped salad, and two veggie burger options: a falafel burger, and a Korean black bean and shiitake burger with kimchi. The trailer offers a kids’ menu and Maine Root sodas. Telo also serves an “extra fancy” burger topped with roasted foie gras and red wine ketchup ($35), a nod to his experience cooking and staging at acclaimed fine dining kitchens like Miller Union in Atlanta, Alinea in Chicago and Eleven Madison Park in New York City.
For more information, visit hankandarties on Instagram . Pasta 212 University of Vermont students Luc Allen and Alex Komessar decided Portland was the perfect place to road-test their concept for a food trailer specializing in fresh-made pasta. “Portland is pretty much the height of the food scene on the East Coast, from what we can tell,” Allen said.
“What we’ve heard people say is, ‘If you can do it in Portland, you can do it anywhere.'” Pasta 212 serves fresh-made pasta in a selection of sauces. Photo courtesy of Pasta 212 Pasta 212 (which refers to the boiling point of water, not the New York City area code) offers three types of their own pasta: campanelle, casarecce and rigatoni.
Customers can then choose from five sauces: Tuscan chicken in cream sauce with asparagus and prosciutto; walnut pesto; alla vodka; arrabbiata; and cacio e pepe. The truck will also sell kale Caesar and Greek salads, cold pasta salads and appetizers like grilled haloumi with chili vinaigrette, along with soft drinks including a house-made blueberry Arnold Palmer. Allen and Komessar aim to keep prices around $8-$14, slightly higher for some weekly seafood pasta specials.
Pasta 212 is slated to appear at various Portland breweries and distilleries this season, including Austin Street Brewery, Lone Pine Brewing Company and Three of Strong Spirits. Their first date so far this summer is June 4 at Belleflower Brewing Company. Allen said he and his partner held a Pasta 212 pop-up last summer at the Enzo event space on Congress Street, and the positive feedback made them confident about moving forward with their trailer.
Originally from eastern Massachusetts, Allen and Komessar have worked in hospitality for several years. “Hospitality is our calling,” said Allen, who hopes to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant with his partner either in Portland or Vermont in the coming years. “Not one single person in the hospitality business has ever recommended we join the business, but that’s what great about it.
It’s not something you want to do as much as something you have to do.” For more information, go to pasta_212 on Instagram . Sandwiches Before launching Sandwiches this winter, chef-owner Henry Sauve had come to love the food truck life while working on the PB&Me food truck.
“I thought, ‘How can I start my own version of this?’ I stumbled into the breakfast-brunch world, and I’ve been doing it since,” Sauve said. Chef-owner Henry Sauve inside his Sandwiches food trailer on Cottage Road in South Portland. Photo courtesy of Sandwiches Sauve’s breakfast sandwich-focused food trailer opened last December in the Cottage Road parking lot of A&C Soda Shop in South Portland.
He said Sandwiches has been “booming” since opening, and he was surprised by the brisk business he did even in the dead of winter. “I didn’t expect people to come out when it was 5 degrees in January, and they did,” Sauve said. Sandwiches sells egg and cheese sandwiches on English muffins ($6) with optional add-ons of bacon, house-made sausage, Spam or avocado ($1.
50 each) and sauces like garlic chili mayo and pesto mayo. The trailer also offers hash browns ($2) and coffee from Lay Day Roasters in Portland. “The goal is to keep it cheap and accessible.
It’s quick, easy, and what I would like to think of as high-quality sandwiches,” Sauve said, noting that he also does occasional pop-ups at venues like The Highroller Lobster Co. and Après, where he expands his offerings to include dishes such as pulled pork sandwiches and lobster Benedict with Spam. Sandwiches is open Monday through Friday from 7-11 a.
m. at 501 Cottage Road. Sauve said he’s grateful for the help he’s received from the city of South Portland to operate his business.
“They’ve just been amazing to work with,” he said. For more information, go to sandwiches.maine on Instagram .
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