What constitutes fine dining can be a matter of taste and personal preference. Perhaps a Michelin star restaurant meets your definition. But more and more, food critics are following the lead of the masses and flocking to food trucks. They’ve become quite popular n Washtenaw County, and over the weekend, food truck operators brought their best in the second annual Ypsilanti Food Truck Warz! WEMU’s John Stockwell was there and provided a tasty report.
It's a gorgeous day at the Ypsilanti Community Center parking lot as food trucks have arrived for the Food Truck Warz, a friendly competition where one of these trucks will be crowned the winner.
I see The Iron food truck in front of me specializing in "waffle-izing" food. Next to that is Stello's Burgers and Loaded Fries. Walk down a little further, and it's last year's winner, Lucky Beez Food Truck—features barbecue.
Next to Lucky Beez, we have Berry BOWL'D. They're making smoothies and bowls and other things. And at the very end, you've got to have your street taco truck.
Robin Castle-Hine is the community events manager for the township, and I asked her how this event came to be.
Robin Castle-Hine: "We were just trying to put together a good community event that everybody could come to and bring something onto this side of the town, so that we could get more exposure to our golf course, our community center, obviously. Most of the events are held on the other side of town. So really, it was to try to bring some attention on this side."
Stockwell: "How do you determine the winner?"
Robin Castle-Hine: "Okay, each food truck has to give me ahead of time two specials. They can sell anything on the menu they want, but they have to give me two specific specials, and you'll see that they're on the outside of every one of the trucks. And whoever sells the most specials wins."
I'm going to head on over to one of the trucks right now where the lines have died down a bit and see if I can talk to someone. I see John Sutherland. He's with The Iron food truck. Let's catch up with him.
Stockwell: "Tell me about the kind of food you offer. If I come to your place, what am I going to get?"
John Sutherland: "So, we don't necessarily serve waffles, but everything is either cooked on a waffle iron or looks like a waffle or is served with a waffle. So, we do a lot of chicken and waffle sandwiches. We do a French onion grilled cheese that's pressed on a waffle iron. And our churro waffles are amazing. It's a deep-fried waffle. It's coated in cinnamon and sugar with your choice of caramel or chocolate sauce. That one's a great one!"
Stockwell: "What's the most unusual thing you think you've waffled?"
John Sutherland: "Oh, so we tried to waffle ramen noodles once. And it almost came out. It was really cool. It was kind of like an egg foo young ramen noodle. It almost made it to the menu."
Right now, I'm headed over to the Lucky Beez barbecue truck, last year's winner of this event. And here's Kim Groce. She's a co-owner of the truck, as well as a chef.
Kim Groce: "We are an international barbecue food truck. We think that barbecue comes from all over the world. So, what we're doing is re-fusing Kansas City barbecue with flavors like Korean barbecue. So, we have a Korean cauliflower taco, which is our vegan specialty. We also do a Korean Bulgogi dog."
Stockwell: "What are some of the favorite things? Like, what is your top seller do you think when people come here?"
Kim Groce: "The top seller are our bowls, and it took me two years to create this bowl. It starts with our specialty sidewinder fries. We do a mild, white queso on top of the fries. We top it with one of our proteins, either a smoked pulled pork or pulled chicken, Kansas City barbecue sauce, barbecue baked beans, a sesame slaw, and tuxedo sesame seeds."
At an event like this, it's very important to find out what the patrons think. Let's go talk to some people.
Patron 1: "I got the waffle chicken thing."
Patron 2: "The rice is really good."
Patron 3: "I think it's nice. It's a really good event. This is my first time coming."
Patron 4: "I just had this grilled cheese. I had a taco, a lot of stuff. The berry bowl, I tried that."
Patron 5: "Well, I'm enjoying the sunshine, first of all. The food is good. Lots of options. Forget about your diet, and you can't go wrong with a street taco."
Stockwell: "Why is it cool to do stuff like this?"
Patron 6: "I think bringing the community out is really important, getting everybody together. And for a positive event, seeing that there's so much good the community can do."
Patron 7: "I also had the quesadilla from the tacos. And the thing that I really liked was the, I think it's called. the churro waffle from the iron. I'm a dessert girl, so that was really delicious."
Patron 8: "Tried the pulled chicken bowl, I think it was. Very good. That chicken, it is very tender."
Stockwell: "That looks tremendous. What do you got going on there?"
Patron 9: "It's the pulled pork, baked beans, French fries, barbecue sauce, coleslaw."
Stockwell: "And it's just in one nice little pile there."
Patron 10: "I love they have all these food trucks here!"
In the end, there can only be one winner. And at the end of the Food Truck Warz 2025 in Ypsilanti, first place went to Stello's Burgers' loaded fries and burgers.
At the Ypsilanti Community Center, I'm John Stockwell on your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU-FM, Ypsilanti.
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