As I've mentioned numerous times since the inception of this blog, I love a good food truck. In fact, I have been known to plan an entire outing around a Twitter food truck stalking session. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that the trend is a fairly recent phenomenon in Chicago (thanks to some strict legislation that for years made it difficult for them to operate in the city); however, there's also the fact that there is some damn good food coming out of many of those trucks! I love the whole concept of a mini restaurant on wheels - ever since I visited my first bona fide food truck in Austin back in 2010 (Hey Cupcake!), I have been obsessed with tracking down various trucks and sampling all of their awesome offerings.
The third annual Chicago Food Social took place the weekend before last and of course, Diana (aka my food truck stalking buddy) and I were all over it! I have to admit that I was slightly apprehensive about the redesign of the festival (previously known as the Food Truck Social), as there was not only a change of location but also the addition of non-food truck restaurant booths; however, the moment we stepped foot onto the festival's grounds, all of my worries were squashed. To put it simply: it was *amazing*! There were rows and rows of food trucks (twice as many as last year!), many of which were new to us and/or impossible to track down. Seriously, it was food truck heaven!
The only downfall was that because there were so many fantastic food trucks, we ended up eating way too much (even though we did share each item & we spread it out over five hours). While we did managed to narrow down our choices to a list of absolute must-visits (that was hard for me because now that I work in the 'burbs, I miss out on most weekday food truck opportunities), we still ended up skipping quite a few because we were soooo stuffed. We've already made a plan for next year that involves visiting in shifts in order to allow for maximum digestion/calorie burn time in between the lunch and dinner sessions. :-)
The Tamale Spaceship: This was at the top of my must-visit list, as I was starting to feel like I was the last foodie in the city to never sample their delicious tamales. The Spaceship was the first stop of the day and ultimately, one of my top picks from the entire festival.
