My family always does a decent job packing in our own food to each Bonnaroo; we’ll equip camp with trail mix and fruit and bread we’ve already toasted so we can make PB&Js or cheese sandwiches.
But we inevitably end up eating at least one meal a day inside Centeroo, the main concert area, the first years out of convenience but now out of a sense of adventure and excitement. Each year, the festival has grown its food presence. You’ve got your typical “event” food, tweaked toward a more pleasant pitch: the traditional fries, sausages with peppers, and crappy beer in plastic bottles, as well as the Samosa Man, jambalaya, and a Broo’ers tent selling handcrafted beers.
Last year, they hopped the American food truck craze and established a Food Truck Oasis. It perches on a slight rise up between the This Tent and the Other Tent. At night, with the Christmas lights that outline truck awnings flashing pinpoints in the dark and the diffuse yellow bulbs from the kitchens throwing shadows of the along the metal, you can stand at a distance and believe that you’re watching a caravan in the desert or a circus camping down for the night. It’s beautiful.
So let’s note a few highlights of this beautiful bevy.
Eatbox, out of Asheville, featured four main wraps: the Dirty South (peppercorn-seasoned steak wrapped with tater tots and bacon scallion sauce), the Cock Pocket (beer brat, sauerkraut, tater tots), the Morning Wood (a breakfast burrito with the classic ingredients + tater tots), and the Rabbit (steamed kale with sesame tahini, hummus, veg, and…wait a minute; one of these things is not like the others…)
I went to town on the Morning Wood, which was fantastic. Tater tots in a breakfast burrito! Masterstroke. What was the “eureka!” moment there?
“They were my idea,” an employee named Shonna told me. “We just got a fryer and I was like, ‘We should totally put tater tots in the wraps instead of, uh, roasted red potatoes.’ I don’t know what it is about Asheville, but like everybody has tots. A lot of people have tachos, like nachos but with tots instead of nachos.”
“Do the tots replace the chips or just mingle with them or what?”
“Tots are awesome,” Shonna replied, with a far away look in her eye that could have been starry or exhausted. “They’re crunchy and creamy and potato’y. There’re a wonderful thing to have in a wrap.”
And then there is the issue of the names. The menu gives us two penis-jokes, one vibrator reference, and a dish that nods to southern hip hop but might also be construed as a nod to a fabled sex act involving the same geography and a common Spanish surname. And of course there is the sandwich board sign, here to the left of the truck.
Eatbox and the sandwich board that I wouldn't point out to my mother
“So what’s up with the porn aspect,” I asked, “with the ‘Eat You Box’ and the boner jokes and such?”
“Oh, we’re a bunch of perverts,” Shonna said. Well, okay then.
Gypsy Queen, also out of Asheville, served up Lebanese Street Food. Shannon had been jonesing for their Fried Cauliflower for a few days and was saving it to be a special treat before we left. Others apparently didn’t wait, because the cauliflower was gone by the time we went for them Sunday evening. The Queen had replaced them with Fried Brussels Sprouts, though, and, although I know I claimed yesterday that the Amish Bakery doughnuts were my favorite food this year, now that I’m remembering them, those Brussels might steal the crown. They were so, so, so, so good.
Brussels are usually best when small and tender, but these large specimens were delicious. They were fried lightly at high heat, I suspect; the outer leaves were browned and the whole sprout was cooked through, but each sprout kept that shade of green you usually see only just after the New Green of each Spring’s leaves debut on the trees. The Brussels were then mixed with caramelized onions and a bit of tahini dressing.
We should have bought additional orders.
While Andrew and Shannon scarfed these down, (Andrew: “Now that was a damn good snack!”) I asked three young women their favorite Oasis foods from the weekend. Ana cited a burger from a truck that sold only that, and from which we thus did not get to sample. Kelly claimed that the Gypsy Queen gyro “was seasoned perfectly and has like thousand island dressing on it.” I’m gonna bet that’s the tahini. Her buddy Judy told me the Queen’s veggie gyro was “really good.”
It wasn’t really good actually. It was some spinach and a tablespoon of chickpeas wrapped in an admittedly thick and yummy pita to make it a “gyro.” Maybe we were hitting the dregs, though, as it was early evening on Sunday. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I bet I’ll dream of those damned Brussels Sprouts tonight.
Petro’s, a franchise based an hour and change east in Knoxville, offered up ultimate stoner food: meat or veggie chili, cheese, sour cream, etc. served on top of tortilla chips in a big cup. I bet everybody reading this can immediately picture exactly what this looks like, from the shade of orange and the length of the cheese shreds to the texture of the tomato bits. When we ate it, it was absolutely perfect. I have to say, I was surprised. Petro’s took a motif that’s a little 7-11’ish and made it a solid meal.
I didn’t hit Roti Rolls until 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, fresh from watching Alice Cooper kick ass with a crackerjack metal band and twelve-foot-tall stage puppets made by the most creative 10th graders around. The other trucks were closed. At Roti Rolls, folks were drunk.
The two signature foods, the owner told me with that precise but blurry-edged enunciation of one still pushing through with a little help after a long, long day, were The Thurman Murman (braised short ribs mixed with mac and cheese in a roti) and the Funky Farmer (various curried vegetables wrapped in the same). I ordered a Funky Farmer, a bit bummed that the only veg option lacked the kimchi that was present in most of the meat options. I love kimchi.
“So what was the eureka moment where you thought, ‘I know, I’ll open a food truck and put kimchi in everything’?” I asked the owner while waiting for my Farmer.
“The eureka moment—” she began.
“Whose is this?” interrupted the owner’s husband, brandishing a roti wrapped in wax paper.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked some dude standing next to me.
“It’s not mine,” he said.
“I’m Jason,” I offer.
“What’s your name?” she asks the dude again.
“John.”
“Oh yeah, it’s not yours.”
“I’m Jason,” I offer again.
“Wait, wait, wait, Jason, that’s you,” she said, pointing at John.
“No, I’m Jason; I’m Jason.”
“You’re Jason!” and she handed me my Funky Farmer. “It’s not the prettiest, for a food blog, but…”
“No, it is quite pretty.”
“Oh, that looks like the bomb,” a random girl with glow sticks tied up in her hair told me before wandering off.
My Funky Farmer was, indeed, the bomb. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’ve purchased spiced veggies wrapped in a carb and been left chewing up something half removed from a clutch of frozen vegetables sprinkled with salt and shoved into my hand. The Funky Farmer, on the other hand, was complexly spicy. And the bread, man, the bread was definitely the bomb, and I live in a Brooklyn neighborhood scattered with Caribbean restaurants specializing in roti.
Sated, I returned to my kimchi question.
“The bread is our inspiration,” the owner said. “My husband and I discovered the bread and were like ‘Holy crap, this is street food!’ So we just find good things to stuff into it.”
Those good things, back home where Roti Rolls is based in Charleston, are all local foods. The website claims to be the town’s first “Farm to Truck” food outlet.
But what about the kimchi! I just saw old-as-hell Alice Cooper kick so much ass that I, whose Cooper appreciation previously was pretty much limited to the brilliant ‘I’m Eighteen’ (He was coming for you, Iggy) and the requisite ‘School’s Out,’ was compelled to stuff my face in the middle of the night to tame the extreme stimulation still thwomping around inside me. What about my kimchi, Roti Rolls?!!
“Kimchi is good and its delicious and it’s fermented cabbage,” she owner drawled, sagging happily into the counter on her elbows. “And I like it!”