Happy Holidays - with frites

Check out this stamp on a holiday card from Eric's friends Charles & Anna in Brussels, Belgium.  Those are frites, aka French fries.  And Chicago's Bruges Brothers were far and away the Food Truck of the Year, 2017.

Those are frites in a cone, without the rich sauce and goodies of our Bruges Brothers

Closing the year with Carnivale food truck

It is always somber to end the food truck season but reality intervened on Dec. 4; a grim outing because upper Columbus Drive north of the Carnivale food truck was blocked by police activity: an Ohio man had committed suicide earlier in the morning by jumping to the pavement from the Aqua high rise.




Kathryn had the burger and Eric the chicken sandwich.
 



Chicken sandwich - very good!

Food truck drought broken - and was it ever!

 

 

A giant barbeque feast from CJ's BBQ Cruiser was the fruit of our first food truck outing in almost a month.  We let work get in the way!

On Thursday, we both tried the "Tip/link combo with fries" and neither got more than a link and a pile of fries from the bottom of the box.


The portable feast - tips, links and fries










Roaming Hunger  tells the CJ's story:  CJ's BBQ Cruiser cruises through Illinois with authentic southern soul and smoky, balanced perfection dripping off every bite. From Maywood and beyond, it's attracting a cult of diners who've found a quicker, no-fuss way to do BBQ, with nothing sacrificed in flavor to give you everything in convenience.

Rib tips, hot wings, sausage links and turkey legs alike make up a menu that's big on hot and savory and small on wimpy. Cruise on up to CJ's to grab some of the midwest's finest bbq for yourself, and discover that easy doesn't mean sacrifice.



CJ's headed the line on Columbus Drive

The unveiling:

 
 
 



Frites at the Art Institute

The little park by the Art Institute at Monroe and Michigan was a perfect spot for delights from the Bruges Brothers truck.

Unworldly tamales

What else would you say about offerings from Tamale Spaceship?  Here's a blog first, a video.   This shows the mid-day seen at the Daley Plaza food truck fest.

Daley Place food truck fest

The spaceship

Home in Ithaca, or Bruges

We recognize that it is a slight stretch to draw a parallel between our quest of that and Odysseus' return home at the end of the Trojan War. That said, we seem to have found our Ithaca, the Bruges Brothers truck with its loaded cones of delight.   Without the perils that faced Odysseus on his return home, I must hasten to add.  Unless it is the calories.

The Brothers came to Columbus Avenue on Oct. 12 -- Food Truck Thursday -- and we were of course there too.   Eric had the Papas Bravas and Kathryn the Braised Oxtail.

Bruges Brothers, Croque Mesdames at the Daley Plaza

The Bruges Brothers food truck was one of more than a dozen purveyors of culinary wonders but once again, we had eyes only for the Brothers.  And the Croque Madame cone: 

"Griddled Ham Off the Bone,  Swiss Fondue, a dash of Dijonnaise, topped with (BAM!) a Sunnyside Egg and a some buttered breadcrumbs."

Maybe we need to rethink the odyssey part of this thing, if we have become fixated on a single truck.

Daley Plaza on a grey day, with trucks

A perfectly good truck, with a long line of patrons

Bruges Brothers

 

That's some competition in the background

Close-up of a delectable Madame

Bop! Rice bowls at our door step

Here's a great mission statement, from the Bob Bar Korean Food Truck's Facebook page: 

"We provide healthy Korean gourmet cuisine right to your door step."   We tucked into rice bowls last Thursday.  A welcome return visit.

As promised - at our door stop (upper Columbus)

Rice and beef

Spicy pork

 

Bop Bar Korean Food Truck on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BopBarTruck
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BopBarTruck
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bopbartruck/

Cheesie's, at last

Where's the beef?  Something a little daunting about a cheese sandwich for lunch but we finally sampled Cheesie's.



The Frenchie.  American cheese, mozzarella cheese, cheddar cheese sauce, classic thick cut french fries, bacon and chives on sour dough bread.

Fries are inside the sandwich, of course.

La Cocinita AND Fat Shallot

Split loyalties on upper Columbus St. between a rice box from La Cocinita and a fat sandwich with cheesy fries from Fat Shallot.

When a dilemma is not a dilemma

Food truck fest at Daley Plaza with a dozen of Chicago's finest, or Bruges Brothers right outside our building?   It wasn't a serious question.

It had to happen - fried stuff

We needed to fill a big gap in the Odyssey, so we stooped to the deep fried goodies of Harold's Chicken Shack.  Still feeling a little guilty...

 

Always the most crowded truck.  All that stuff can't come from one truck!

 

Catfish (complete with bones!) and chicken

Chicken with hot stuff