Battle of the Food Trucks: Judgment Day

Matt Sayar

For the second annual Battle of the Food Trucks on June 1st, 37 vehicles descended upon the Meanwhile Block in downtown Colorado Springs to feed 1.5k people. Our intrepid foodie entrepreneur Matt Schniper was asked to help judge and rank the best of best. Instead, he chose to gallivant across Spain for a vacation. Fortunately for the local community, another Matt S. was willing and able to step up in his absence.

As a representative for Side Dish, of course

I thoughtfully critiqued the presentation of painstakingly-plated food. I selflessly sampled dish after dish of delicious food. I sipped tasty beverages. I scribbled down tasting notes. I lounged in a comfortably-cool room while our food runners gathered plates from each truck under the scorching sun. 

I did this for you, not for me. 

1.5k thousand people attended
Judge's table
Big thanks to The Betties for helping make the judge experience as good as it can be

The Best Food Trucks

As announced on the official Facebook page, the best food trucks are:

  1. Bowl in the City, LLC (They defended their title and won a 2nd year in a row)
  2. Prime Kitchen
  3. The WildCard It's All Good Food Truck and Catering
 
People’s Choice Award: La Tapatia Tacos
 
My personal ballot looked very similar. Bowl in the City knocked us out with a tasty Korean bao bun with a spectacular presentation (see below). Prime Kitchen's burgers deserved their long line at their food truck. WildCard made a Korean taco with complex, spicy-but-not-overwhelming, refreshing flavor. 
 
I also want to call special attention to RJ Foodies, For the Love of Frybread, and Smash Wrap N Roll. RJ Foodies had a delicious beef roast with potatoes and carrots which tasted better than home comfort food has any right to taste. For the Love of Frybread caught me off guard; I didn't think I could be surprised by the flavor of anything fried again in my life, but I was! Smash Wrap N Roll made a delicious smashburger with pickled onions that packed a flavorful punch. 
Kool Vybz Kitchen
Prime Kitchen
Bowl in the City

What's it like to be a judge?

I worried about a couple things before I started judging. First and foremost: the quantity. I sat next to Teresa Farney, a food editor at The Gazette, who's done this kind of thing more than once in her thirty-plus years of journalism. "Pace yourself," she advised me. That meant eating only a bite or two from each sample, then consciously, painfully, putting my fork down instead of devouring my favorites. This was good advice, especially towards the end. Jes sat on my other side and we helped keep each other in check.
 
I also worried about being fair and impartial. Each judge (all eight of us) rated each food based on taste (60% of the total score), presentation (20%), and creativity (20%). In the beginning it was easy to Oooh and Ahhh at everything, but by the time you've seen your fifth taco plate, how do you maintain that same enthusiasm? I didn't want to readjust my earlier ratings, but I knew from the get-go that it's impossible to have a holistic view of all the food when we're eating it sequentially.
 
This turned out to be a non-issue! I assumed we would eventually add up all our numbers in a spreadsheet, sum/average everything, and then The Final Answer would be the Unalterable Truth for the best food trucks. But something as subjective and nuanced as food doesn't work quite like that.
 
What we did was take each judge's top four (based on our individual scoring), compared each judge's short-list with each other, produced a consensus Top Three, then did a gut check (ha!) to ensure we're all in agreement. That made a lot of sense to me and felt fair. Can you imagine if the champion of a Top Chef-type show was determined by a spreadsheet? Data should be part of the answer, not the whole answer. (*cough*, pay no attention to my data science experiment to objectively rank all our restaurants).
 
On the whole, I liked nearly everything I tried; our city is spoiled with good food trucks. Even as the Colorado weather eventually rained everyone out, I had a great time meeting new people and trying new food. Going to these events is a great way to "speed date" food you'll want to try later. Fingers crossed my favorites will upgrade to a brick-and-mortar storefront someday!
 
Thanks to Matt Schniper for tapping me to judge in his place. Thanks to Ryan Hannigan for the sweet shirt.