What an awesome display of DC food trucks at Franklin Park today!

Sauca has been tearing up the DC food truck scene with its excellent international cuisine and, on Monday, is introducing its third food truck called Marco Polo!

Only a handful of DC food truck businesses have multiple trucks: Curbside Cupcakes and Fojol Bros, with a 2nd Lobster Pound truck coming in a few months.  But, Sauca will be the first business to have three trucks serving hungry crowds in DC.

I really don’t know what to call this, but it’s going to be the mother of all #FarragutFriday’s, except on Monday @ Franklin Park!  (14th & K St NW)

Date: Monday, Jan 10, 2011
Location: Franklin Park – 14th & K St NW
Food Trucks Participating: stay tuned – they are all about to tweet!
Mission: To satisfy all of your bodily needs and desires, through food

Cya there! 🙂

I’m not really sure which food truck coined the term Farragut Friday.  It’s been around for a while, so I’m thinking it could have been named by one of the original DC food trucks 2.0: Sauca, El Floridano, DC Slices or Fojol Bros.  But, what does it mean?

Farragut Friday is a DC food truck tradition where many food trucks park around Farragut Square Park (17th & K St NW) on the Friday of every week.  It’s definitely a sight to be seen when enough trucks participate.  Lately, though, trucks have been spreading the love down K Street to Franklin Square Park (14th & K St NW) and even to 19th & L St NW on Fridays, such as today.

Also fun to note is that on Twitter on Fridays, you will see a lot of #FF tweets followed by a list of @usernames.  That is a Twitter tradition called “Follow Friday” where people tweet their recommendations of people to follow or just shout outs to their best Twitter friends.  So, maybe Farragut Friday was inspired by Follow Friday?

Edit: And, right after I post this article, Takorean tweets this 🙂  @takorean: Our habit of serving fresh Korean TaKos to the people of L’Enfant on Friday’s continues!

District Taco‘s cart may be seeing less action today, but their brand new headquarters & restaurant is buzzing with activity @ 5723 Lee Hwy, Arlington, VA 22207.

On Monday, Jan 10 @ 6pm, DT will be hosting an eating contest at their restaurant!  You need to sign up and sign a waiver TODAY in order to be entered into the contest.  Full details are on their website!

Two trucks, Sauca and Sweetbites, were both forced by police to close up their truck and move locations yesterday due to an antiquated law. The law says that food trucks must have a line or be serving customers or else they can be forced to move locations by the police. Some say that the law is a loophole to benefit the brick and mortar restaurants.

I also strolled by Fojol Bros and Sweetbites yesterday at L’Enfant plaza and observed a police car hovering in their area with lights flashing.  I guess I should have stopped by to chat with Sweetbites so they wouldn’t have had to move – doh!

Could all of this sudden police presence be related to the Congressional swearing in ceremony that was being held yesterday? I guess we’ll see if police activity lightens up now that the new Congress is in session and the security alert is over.

See Sauca’s official write-up on the incident.

DC Empanadas starts serving today from their newly permitted food truck!  Here is the schedule of stops for the next couple of days:

Wed (today): Capitol South
Thurs: Federal Center
Fri: 19th & L St NW

DC Empanadas tweeted today that they are getting their food truck inspected by DCRA today.  They got so excited that they forgot to fill up the gas tank and ran out of gas on the way over! 🙂  But, a followup tweet noted that they made it to the inspection.

Sabor’a Street, who hoped to start serving last week has tweeted that they are still working through the inspection & licensing process.

I’ve observed that the inspection process can take a long time and that it is really hard to predict when a truck will make it through inspection. So, I’ll keep an eye on the tweets and let you know when they confirm that they have passed inspection and are ready to serve!

Today, December 23, is going to be the last serving day of 2010 for most food trucks. Food trucks that have announced that they are done for the year include: @lobstertruckdc, @CurbsideCupcake, @fojolbros and @dcslices (edit: @TaKorean also tweeted that it will be back after the holidays, @FLmeetsDC (El Floridano) IS SERVING!)

@pleasantpops has also tweeted that it is parking the truck until winter is over.

After all of this talk about winter, I have to mention yesterday’s Washington Post article by Tim Carman which talks about how food trucks survive the wintertime when it’s so cold outside.

I have just received word from Sabor’a Street’s PR folks that the newest food truck has finalized their Latin-inspired menu and are expecting to start serving as early as next week! The plan is to start serving while things are slow next week, so that they will have all of the kinks worked out in time for more busy times in January.

I have menu details and pictures on the Sabor’a Street page located here!  As a footnote, Sabor’a Street is available to cater on New Year’s Eve!  Contact info is on the Sabor’a Street page as well.