We're bringing food trucks to Brandon and Riverview! Our next food truck rally will have 15-20 food trucks with everything from BBQ to Cuban Sandwiches! We will see you there!

First Tarpon Springs Food Truck Rally 12/10!

We are rocking and rolling, ladies and gentlemen. There is no question, Tampa Bay loves food trucks. We've been approached regarding (and have plans in the works for) Rallies in Ybor, Brandon, New Port Richie, Sarasota, Bradenton, Lakeland, Wesley Chapel, Land-O-Lakes, and so on and so forth. Wherever in the Bay Area you live, we're happy to soon be bringing a Tasting Tampa Food Truck Rally to you! Bringing me to my current good news, this weekend we have South St Petersburg's first Rally, Saturday 12/3 from 11am to 3pm, with Craft Beer, Music, 20 trucks, and some that are brand new to the scene!

3951 34th St South, St Petersburg FL. There will be over 400 parking spaces right out front, and indoor seating.And next week the first ever rally in Tarpon Springs! With an art show and all sorts of other fun, right in the middle of downtown Tarpon (100 E Tarpon Ave if you need an address for your GPS) from 11am-3pm, per usual. The street will be closed off and there will be ample parking surrounding the area. Check out the Snazzy new poster!

And a third Food Truck Rally this month on 12/17 will be in North St Pete, near 4th St North and 45th Ave, more info to follow soon! Keep on (food) truckin!

Pinellas County's first every food truck rally has arrived! Check out this Largo based food truck rally. There will be vino, beer, food trucks, and more at Barley Mow!

Come join us at our food truck rally in Tampa!

What a time to be in the food truck world, it was the second rally ever in Tampa. We had trucks of all kinds and man, they just were not ready for what you had for them if we're being honest. Most trucks had never been under a serious load of customers like we had that day at Christ Fellowship on October 22nd. It was a blast, we thought we'd have a good turnout, which we did, it was big. We even wanted people to car pool. Rideshare wasn't really a thing yet so, we did it old school and it worked. Parking was hectic but doable. 

Circle of life, we've now had trucks head to breweries in the Heights, release parties, house parties with food trucks galore and even snuck in some caterings for some of the public schools. Teachers gotta eat too! 

Tasting Tampa is proud to co-sponsor the first Tampa Food Truck Rally with Tampa web design company 352 Media Group. This is the piece I did for Creative Loafing on the event, more to come soon but there is already an enormous response to the event in the hours since we announced it.

Tampa's very first Food Truck Rally will be held on Saturday, September 24th, from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. The event is hosted by (and located at) Hyde Park Presbyterian Church in South Tampa, and sponsored by Tasting Tampa and 352 Media Group. Expect a variety of flavors, like Wicked 'Wiches' awesome sandwiches, 3 Ballers Traveling Bistro's gourmet fare, Michelle Faedo's famous Deviled Crab & Cubans, and much more. Expect live music, home-baked desserts, free child care and a nice shaded parking lot to enjoy it in. What's not to love? Keep checking back to CL Tampa's Food & Drink site for updates on vendors and entertainment. Parking will be available in the Hyde Park Village parking garage across the street from the church. HPPC is located at 1309 W. Swann Ave, at the intersection of Swann and Willow. More information is available at the event's Facebook page.

According to the guy that took my order, "Da Kine" means "The Sh*t" in Hawaii. I won't argue.

I drove past this place ten times before I was actually smart enough to pull over and give it a try. Permanently parked next to a HoJo and a failed business, the bright orange food truck has occupied the same spot on S. Dale Mabry for a couple years or better, and consistently cranks out

some damn tasty food at a pretty fair price.

Although I've yet to try one, the menu of Shave Ice is pretty impressive looking, with some creations such as the "Ol' Weezy Bear" (Grape, Blackberry, Guava) and "The Bobo" (Peach, Horchata, and Condensed Milk) sticking in my memory as some of the more creative beverages

available in the area...

Oh yeah. That's seven bucks well spent. Shredded chicken, shaved steak, sweet ribs (similar to Korean Gal Bi), and a side of rice, to which you can liberally apply either "Da Sauce", a sweet-salty-soy concoction, and/or sriracha, the green capped red asian pepper sauce that has become the

BBQ of our generation.

(in case the first picture didn't look good enough)

And the signature macaroni salad, included with my meal and covered in my signature sriracha sauce. Apologies that I didn't catch it in it's natural sriracha-less form, but let's be honest with each other here, it looks way cooler with a spiral of spicy red goodness slathered about the top.

And we were the first customers EVER. How cool. By we I mean myself and my friends Tim & Michelle, who co-write the food blog "Bites in the Heights" on Facebook (check them out!). The rain delayed the grand opening a couple hours, then getting the kitchen up and running delayed it further, but we finally got to fill our empty tummies. The menu is a variety of creative sandwich-esque portable food, which is targeting the good looking and affluent drunks scattered about Howard Avenue on any given weekend (or week) night. I'm allowed to say that too, because I'm good looking and affluent.

And quite modest. (ha, you thought I was going to say drunk) But I digest...So Michelle got a "TOASTwich" called the "Portable" ($7.50), which had a medley of veggies, the predominant of which was the balsamic marinated Portabellas, yum! Enjoyed it thoroughly, the bread was soft on the inside but had a nice char from the grille which gave it an enjoyable crunch. The sweet potato chips were thin, crispy, and pretty decent too. The chef told me that they bake all their own bread each day, and that they make almost everything from scratch each day too. He'd spent 16 hours yesterday just working on smoking the pork! (mmmm... pork...) but I'm getting ahead of myself...That my friends, is a Bourbon Mango Pork Kota ($3.75).

"What the heck is a Kota" you ask? Or perhaps you already wikipedia'd it and beat me to it, but a Kota (also called a "Bunny Chow") is apparently a South African sandwich where a hollowed out loaf of bread is stuffed with something tasty. And very appropriate, because it was probably the tastiest thing we had tonight. Great smokiness, great spicy kick, a sweet note from the mango, well seasoned, and nicely complimented by the chipotle ranch potato chips. The only thing I didn't dig about the chips is that some weren't cooked crispy, but again, this 4-wheeled restaurant had only been open for about 20 minutes, so I anticipated a couple bugs would need to be worked out. And here is the Turducken "Smash Ball", which was my least favorite 'Witch of the three, but was by no means bad (just had a couple bugs to be worked out too, the owner explained they were tweaking the meat-to-bread ratio and it would soon be revised).

A Turkey-Duck-Chicken patty with cranberry sauce on it, 4AM thanksgiving drunk food. Methinks someone did their homework. Here's the owner and his son, he also owns the restaurant "Fresh" in downtown Tampa. Really nice guy, and was very genuinely wanted our honest feedback. I hope they do well, I really dig the concept and the menu, and they couldn't have picked a much more ideal spot to sell their fare on weekend nights!