A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO NEW ORLEANS STREET EATS
This website is a guide to the wonderful food trucks, carts, stands, festival and market vendors, and otherwise street eats and lesser know dining in New Orleans, Louisiana.
NOLA Food Trucks aims to create an easy to use listing of vendors, maps, a search feature, and categories by cuisine types and specific locations. We will also include photos and menus as much as possible. We tend to write in the positive about these businesses, although we will always be honest in our findings. Restated, this isn’t a “review” site. Nola Food Trucks would rather readers make up their own minds as to what they like and don’t like, and don’t really think it is fair to really put a $3- 7 dollar meal at a small independently owned local business under a microscope. Thus, you won’t see star ratings or harsh judgments here.
If you have any tips, updates, or your own opinions, feel free to leave comments or drop us a line!
Warning: Street food information is especially vulnerable to change (the trucks are on wheels after all). Although we will do our best to keep this site updated, any news you send our way will be especially appreciated.
THE RULES
Comments and discussion are welcomed and encouraged. However, please conduct yourselves with decorum and respect towards others. Anything the editors of this site deem to be trolling, flaming, or anything spiteful, slanderous or downright annoying will be moderated. Moderated means we will generally first give a warning, then after that, we ban that commenter. It is very rare that we remove comments or change the wording in comments. We absolutely do not remove posts based on whether or not a business owner likes the copy or commentary in a particular post, although a business owner is always welcome to respond in the comments themselves. We don’t use swear words on the site and chronic potty mouths will be banned. If you want to link to this site, or portions of our content, please do long as you publish and give clear credit to the authors. Taking photos, “Scraping”, blatant or excessive copying, or presenting content in a way that makes it appear to be your own work is lame and since our content is copy written it is also illegal, so please don’t do it.
NEW ORLEANS LOVES STREET FOOD
Food trucks are a current – and growing – trend in many cities, and continue to be featured in national newspaper articles, TV shows, and in other popular culture outlets. While New Orleans’ food truck scene is smallish in comparison to places like Austin, Texas or Portland, Oregon, there is a burgeoning movement here in with new trucks serving up everything from gourmet Po-Boy sandwiches, to haute patisserie, to more traditional ethnic offerings such as Vietnamese food, or the good old humble Hispanic taco.
Some of the reasons for the small size of Nola’s food truck scene are, sadly, political. After the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans saw a growth of food trucks as a way to bring affordable prepared food to citizens and workers when restaurants and grocers were still closed, and many houses still did not have running water or electricity. However, for reasons that still remain a bit murky and controversial, the city’s regulations around mobile dining in New Orleans have become more stringent over time, while other cities have gone the opposite route and relaxed their laws. Part of NOLA Food Trucks’ mission is to help explore, and advocate, around the benefits of street food, and we will be providing resources, research and other advocacy to help make the street food scene in New Orleans even better.
However, street food in New Orleans has always been a part of the landscape and continues to emerge as the city’s population and recovery increases. Produce trucks are regularly parked alongside streets or crawling through neighborhoods. The sweet icy treats known as Sno-Balls continue to cool off residents and tourists alike. Regional specialties such as hot tamales, handmade sausages, boiled crawfish, and even the one of a kind local spicy noodle soup called “Yaki Mein” remains an integrated component of most parades and public special events in and around the city. Good times, good food and public celebrations are simply the way things are done here. It’s hard to imagine New Orleans without street food as part of the mix.
Festivals such as Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest and others are known as much for their wonderful food booths as they are for the featured music and arts. Area farmers markets are growing in size and location and now featuring many food venders selling a variety of prepared items with seasonal and locally procured ingredients such as from baked goods to gumbo. Even “underground” or “pop-up” restaurants where talented high-end chefs will set up outside on the patios of local bars, or offer phone order only pizza once a week are are starting to become part of the local dining fabric.
Locals from various places and committed food-loving tourists from all over know that some of the best food to be had in any city from Bangkok to Baja is to be had at small street stands, carts, and other non-restaurant restaurants. New York City, for example, a city with some great street food, holds the annual “Vendy Awards” to express their love for mobile dining. Simply put, street food isn’t a trend, it’s a way of life.
Street food is also about supporting small, locally-owned businesses and small start-ups that might not have the capital or credit to open up their own full-fledged restaurants. In many cases they have become the stepping stones to full restaurant ownership. That said, food carts are not restaurants! With limited hours, lack of indoor (and sometimes lack of any) seating, and small menus, they complement rather than compete with full-scale restaurants – something called complimentary retail services in economic development. Food trucks have been proven to help create vibrant commercial districts and thriving neighborhoods by bringing what urban planners call a “social fabric on the street” to otherwise blighted areas which is great in real estate development terms, but in economic terms also attracts other spenders, new retail outlets, including restaurants, bars and cafes. Food trucks have also been proven to bring healthy and affordable dining options to low income and other underserved “food deserts” in cities. Street food, when carefully regulated, can be a win for everyone.
Regardless, food trucks and street foods of all kinds are part of the culinary fabric of our wonderful city and dining in New Orleans wouldn’t be the same without them. We hope you’ll enjoy discovering, reading about and eating at these establishments as much as we do.
Bon appétit …
New Orleans Food Trucks
