Food Truck Tour. Vancouver, Canada

Before my brothers wedding (way back in September), we had a few days to explore Vancouver. Naturally, I did some searching and came across a Food Truck tour run by Vancouver Foodie Tours. While Melbourne has a great food scene, I think the food truck scene is something that is only just growing in popularity so I was interested, and excited, to see what this would involve. With over 100 food trucks there is certainly a lot of choice ranging from Indian, to Korean fried chicken to grilled cheese. Hugely popular in Vancouver, there are even apps available so that you can see where your favourite food truck is located on any given day.

We chose to do the 2 hour ‘World’s Best Food Truck Tour’ which allowed us to try a variety of food trucks so as to get a real experience of what Vancouver has to offer. We meet Manuela, our guide, next to the Japadog stand to begin the tour.

Japadog is one of the most iconic food trucks in Vancouver, since opening in 2005, they offer a variety of hotdogs with Japanese influences and flavours such as wasabi, kobe beef and miso sauce. We were each given half of a Terimayo dog which is their signature hotdog. The terimayo and seaweed gave it a great Japanese flavour which I think complimented the pork sausage.

Following the hotdog, we walked down the leafy streets of downtown Vancouver to grab a thirst quenching ginger lemonade from ‘Moms Grilled Cheese’ which was just what we needed on a warm summers day.

Our next stop was an experience to remember. The Kaboom Box serve hot smoked salmon thats smoked in the food truck. We had their side salad which had hot smoked salmon, green, cranberries, candied walnuts with balsamic vinaigrette. The salad was light, the salmon perfectly smoked and the cranberries and walnuts added great texture.

This was definitely the popular dish with the group, and at some stage I would love to experiment and try and replicate it.

The next food truck was one that got me excited. A Japanese Fried Chicken truck. I have a great love of fried chicken (Gami chicken anyone?) which sometimes concerns my husband. This was no ordinary fried chicken though, Mogu marinade their chicken before it is deep fried and served with a home made chilli sauce. The chilli sauce had just the right amount of heat and the chicken just the right amount of crunch. I had to refrain myself from stealing everyone else’s little cup.

Our last stop was to EAT chicken wraps where we had a Hoison Chicken wrap and a chilli chocolate diablo cookie. By this stage we were quite full and we all struggled to finish the wrap. The cookie however was a welcome sweet to finish off the day and it packed a punch with the amount of chilli it contained.

Overall, this was great experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone travelling to Vancouver. Our guide was knowledgable, not only about the food trucks, but also local history. Fingers crossed for more food trucks in Melbourne.