Streetfood Nirvana

I just had a story come out in men’s health magazine that used 33 pictures for one story, a new record…....I spent a week on the road a couple months ago with writer Matt Goulding, the same writer that I worked with last year on the Mens Health “Beauty and the Beast” story about pork (scroll down for it). That story won a pile of awards both for the photography and writing, so I think the editors wanted an encore to see if we could pull it off again. My gut tells me this one will be well received as well. This story was about the best street eats in the country, and the general acknowledgment that the sidewalk culinary experience has taken huge leaps and bounds in the last 5 years or so. We started in our hometown of NYC, and went to Austin, Portland, San Fran, and LA as well, all cities with stellar streetfood scenes and excellent mobile food. This really was a dream assignment, Lots of great food, in great cities, and getting paid. Some highlights include: in Portland a margherita pizza with fresh basil and homemade mozzarella, made in a wood fired brick oven (in a trailer) that was the best pizza I’d ever had. In Austin, the tenderest BBQ ever out of converted yellow school bus called “old school BBQ”. In SF a succulent heritage pork porchetta sandwich from the roliroti truck and chef Thomas. In Austin, a homemade doughnut called the “porky’s”, with whipped cream cheese, spicy good jalepeno jelly, and Canadian bacon, all served out of an airstream trailer. Also in Austin, easily the best tacos I’ve ever had, the seared ahi tuna taco with pickled red onions, from Izzos tacos. I had sushi out of a cart, foie gras, escargot, a kimchee quesadia, a double cheesburger called the “cheesus”, with grilled cheese sandwiches on either side as the buns. Those are just the highlights I remember. Its really amazing and crazy the stuff we ate while standing at a window to order. I know that I will look back on this one fondly, wishing that we could do it again and again, it was that much fun. The only sad part really is that we ate at so many places every day, that we could only sample and take bites of everything, as we were perpetually stuffed and popping Rolaids to keep going. Work.