The World's First Food Truck Drive-In

The New York City Food Film Festival, DUMBO, 2010.

The New York City Food Film Festival presents documentaries, features and short films about food. All of the films are selected by a panel of industry experts. The 2010 selections ranged from political food puns, and grits in the American South, to a portrait of a Brooklyn knifemaker, and a passionate bread-baker in Austria. The festival, now in its fourth year, continues to grow in popularity not only for its films but also for its niche events like this year's Food Truck Drive-In Movie, the first in the world. The premise was simple: food trucks drove in and viewer-eaters arrived on foot. I was, of course, one of them.

Looking back at everything I ate that day, it's no wonder I woke up the next morning with a major food hangover. (Nayland Blake's early video Gorge comes to mind.) The smorgasbord of offerings included delicious shrimp and lobster rolls from Red Hook Lobster Pound, dumplings from 2009 Vendy winner Rickshaw Truck, cheese sandwiches grilled by Milk Truck NYC, expensive vegan burgers and organic chicken burritos from The Green Truck, a wild choice of desserts from Le Petit Temptation, packaged goodies by Brooklyn confectioners Whimsy and Spice, and Liddabit Sweets, creamy cones from the Van Leeuwen Ice Cream Truck, and much more.

Flourless Coconut Cookie with Nutella filling, Street Sweets.

Lobster Roll with a pickle and chips, Red Hook Lobster Pound. 

All Day Breakfast Sandwich (made with aged Wisconsin Gruyere, farm fresh fried egg & caramelized onions on Rye), Milk Truck NYC.

All Day Breakfast Sandwich (detail).

Gluten-free Chocolate Cookie loaded with walnuts, Street Sweets.

Taiwanese style fried pork chop over rice with pork sauce, NYC Cravings.
(This was eaten by artist Elaine Tin Nyo, but it looked so good that I had to take a picture.)

Strawberry Rhubarb People's Pop from The Cooking Chanel Ice Cream Truck.

Lemon Tart seen in the film In De Keuken (In the Kitchen) - La Paix,
prepared by the French Culinary Institute.

Twenty-five different food vendors was plenty to choose from. But still there was more. Foods that appeared in some films (projected in a central tent) were served to guests as they watched. Two films on the afternoon menu -- In De Keuken: La Paix, and Flowers, Fruit, Sugar, and Spices -- were especially tasty.

Directed by Erwin Bruyninckx, In De Keuken ("in the kitchen") follows one professional chef and two amateur chefs in Belgium as they make identical recipes. The film is rather poetic, showing that good flavor comes from passion, not from training. It is also a hilarious juxtaposition of professional kitchen practices and home improvisation. For example, the chef in the professional kitchen uses a pastry bag to create perfectly shaped meringues for a lemon tart dessert (picture above). The amateur, on the other hand, uses a kitchen garbage bag with a hole poked in the bottom.

Flowers, Fruit, Sugar, and Spices, directed by Valeria Cavagnetto and Teresa Rocco, seemed a crowd favorite, and certainly had resonance with me. The documentary profiles the oldest operating confectioner in Europe, Pietro Romanengo Company. The Romanengo family has been making candied fruits and stone-ground chocolates for over 200 years. Their operation is beautifully described in the film as "confectionary art on the port near the sea." The film (watch it here) as well as the candies were real treats.