Vancouver’s streets are richly filled with carefully crafted culinary creations

By Sarah Bohuch
Photos by Rick Chung

Food carts haven’t always had the best reputation. Fast food chains, restaurants, pubs, and in dire enough circumstances even the grocery store have all seemed the better choice over the greasy options offered at these mobile street units. But that image has changed drastically in recent years. Food carts and the culture of street food have become respectable culinary opponents to the traditional restaurant. They have become quest objects in and of themselves, particularly in Vancouver, where people keep track of their locations in order to quickly sate their fervent appetites.

I know this, for I myself have spent time hunting and tracking down Vancouver’s best and brightest options in the food truck race. The downtown core is the chosen hunting ground, for the sheer number of trucks huddled along Howe on any given day is well known and internet-proven. Grabbing a hapless friend, I began my journey at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Rumoured to lurk nearby was the legendary Pig on the Street truck, a vehicle known for its delicious and creative crafting of bacon treats. I arrived at the stone steps of the gallery only to find that I had a problem: the food truck was not there.

How to learn from my mistake: know that different food trucks occupy different spaces on different days. A truck on Robson and Howe on Tuesday can declare its territory in Gastown on Thursdays and alternate Mondays. Before you track down a specific truck, make sure you know where it is.

Alas, I had to drown my sorrows in grilled cheese. Down the street was Mom’s Grilled Cheese Truck, a pale green steel-plated food receptacle with some of the friendliest staff I’ve ever met. More diner than truck, it specializes in customizable grilled cheese (you choose the bread, cheese, and any extra fixings) as well as daily specialities. The sandwiches are then fried up and served in bright red paper cones on a bed of chips and dill pickles.

The sandwiches are crispy and melty, and will satisfy even the most hearty of appetites. Mom’s also offers a dessert option in the form of candied apples, walnuts and cinnamon mascarpone cheese served on brioche for those desiring more dairy.

With appetites merely whetted, my companion and I trundled down the street in search of more food. Two blocks away we stop by a cart covered in a painted mural of Godzilla stomping a burger-wielding samurai. Mogu Japanese Street Eats specializes in Japanese style sandwiches, and I chose to opt for the Chicken Karrage, a sweet and spicy option.

The proprietor, seeing us shiver in the cold as we waited, offered us free hot green tea with a smile. The sauce was sweet, gingery, delicious, and just spicy enough to warm the lips and throat. The frying process was an intriguing cross between tempura and Kentucky- fried. The meat itself, however, was much too greasy, and I did not finish it.

Next we find Feastro, the Rolling Beastro getting ready to shut down (most food trucks are only in business from around 11–3 p.m.) and place our order. This particular venue is famous for its penchant for local ingredients and fresh toppings, and has one of the best fish soft tacos in town.

I ordered the local red snapper, which is fried in chickpea batter and served with tomato chutney, cabbage, tikka masala yogurt, and hand-cut salsa. It was extremely light and crisp, and utterly delicious. I’m not a fan of star anise (which was in the chutney) but it was not overpowering and worked well with the other ingredients.

Mission accomplished sans bacon, we stumble to the Skytrain pondering the simple joy of a full stomach. Food trucks have indeed become a big player in the food scene, bringing not only delicious food and friendly service to the street but also a sense of novelty. As there is more effort involved in locating them, there is a sense of pride that comes with having successfully found and eaten at a mobile food cart. And that right there is what will keep the trucks rolling.

Mama is creepy, but not fully realized

By Sarah Bohuch

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: once upon a time two children enter the cold, dark woods, only to experience tragedy when their mother is mysteriously taken from them. After much wandering, they come across a small cottage. It looks abandoned, but in reality it’s not, and neither are the surrounding woods. No, not ringing any bells?

I’m a sucker for a good ghost story, and one seemed to present itself in Andres Muschietti’s Mama. The story itself deals with Victoria and Lily, two sisters who are found in an abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods five years after they went missing from their home. After their rescue (and time at a special clinic) they are taken home by their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones fame) and his girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain from Zero Dark Thirty). As they all learn to make a new family together, strange things begin to happen around the house, rapidly escalating in both violence and scope. Something, it seems, has followed the girls home from the woods.

The film’s high points are incredible, but these high points take up little screen time. One of the most disturbing moments of the film takes place when the girls are initially found, and it becomes clear that something mysterious has happened to them and they are no longer normal. They skitter around the cabin on all fours, darting from shadow to shadow, seemingly incapable of speech. The only word they do know, which they repeat over and over, is “Mama.”

The less-than-applause worthy moments, however, stick out sorely. The movie makes efforts to drive home the fact that Annabel is edgy and alternative. One of these scenes is during the first meeting of Annabel with the girls’ shrink. She’s hostile to him for no real reason, and the occasion doesn’t call for it since he is advising on proper care of these two obviously emotionally damaged young girls. This happens again later in the movie when she is discussing visitation rights to the girl’s aunt. The situation is an unhappy and uncomfortable one for all of the characters but yet again she is pointlessly aggressive to a woman whose sister has died and has done nothing to warrant it other then put in a bid for custody when the girls were found (which isn’t so unreasonable, given that these are her sister’s kids). The movie also has a scene in which Annabel is playing with her band, which serves no point other than to drive home the fact that yes, she does play bass in a real band. It does nothing to advance the plot, as if the audience would not believe such assertions about her character otherwise. It got to the point where every time the character did anything that was meant to advance this characterization (like acting like a pointless prick) my cousin and I would laugh to each other and say something to the effect of: “It’s okay. She’s in a rock band.”

The heavy-handed “telling, not showing” became ingratiating, and made it difficult for us to fully immerse ourselves in the world of the film. While the film was certainly very creepy, it wasn’t wholly realized. If you are in the market for a ghost story with disturbed children, atmospheric dark houses, and a terrible mystery in the woods, then I would recommend this one, but if you’re looking for the next Shining, you’d best look elsewhere.