One of the biggest drawbacks of being at Lansdowne is that the culinary programs are at Interurban. Don’t get me wrong, the Lansdowne cafeteria has great burgers and poutine; I highly recommend the breakfast as well. However, the cafeteria at Interurban is a dining experience. They serve up meat with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy on real plates with metal cutlery; they have a salad bar. There’s also better desserts, such as rice pudding and butter tarts.
Thankfully, students at Lansdowne do get a weekly visit from the Camosun Cuisine Machine, the Camosun food truck run by Culinary students. The menu changes weekly but maintains an international street food flare. I love food trucks and am glad that Camosun decided to add a food truck to their culinary program.
“The [food truck is the] idea and brainchild of our previous chair, Steve Walker-Duncan,” says chef Heidi Fink. “He really liked the idea of an interdisciplinary college-wide project, because it involves sheet metal students, pipe fitting students, electrical students, the graphic design students, culinary students, I’m sure there are other departments that got involved to renovate and fit the food truck out.”
Fink says that she was the “OG of the food truck chefs”; Walker-Duncan’s vision for the food truck was an international street food menu, which was Fink’s strong suit. The timing of the project came when Fink had started a temporary full-time contract. After requesting to take the food truck on, Fink was given the green light.
In January of 2018, Camosun purchased a truck; by July there was a soft launch. That September the food truck had a hard launch. Naming the food truck was done through a month-long contest with a prize of free food at the food truck for the whole semester. An instructor came up with “Cuisine Machine,” winning the contest.
The food truck unit of the Professional Cook Training program is taught during the second semester, and there are some differences from the classroom kitchen. Space is limited on the food truck, both in terms of room to move around and the amount of food that can be transported. Students get assigned to one station, whether that be the fryer, flattop, filling tacos, or making poutine, and don’t move from there. They need to learn to be efficient with their time and space, as both are very limited. There’s also maintaining food safety standards—it’s different in a mobile kitchen than a brick-and-mortar kitchen. For one, there’s a limited amount of water.
“I think the main thing that they’re excited to learn is sort of an international menu that we create on the truck which is also just a little different,” says Fink. “Also, with the street-food aspect, it’s just so they get to learn slightly different cooking techniques.” (The rest of the curriculum is more traditional French cuisine.)
Camosun students aren’t the only students that get to be on the Cuisine Machine: once a week the food truck ventures out to a high school. Some high schools they visit monthly while other schools they only visit once per semester.
“We get culinary students from the high school culinary program or cafeteria program come on the truck with us,” says Fink. “So high schools, we can have as many as six or seven students and two instructors on the truck for service.”
Camosun Professional Cook Training student James Campbell says that what surprised him the most about being on the truck was how much fun he had.
“I thought it was gonna be fun,” says Campbell, “but I didn’t think it was gonna be that much fun.”
Campbell points out that while they try to set up as quickly as possible on the food truck there’s a little more leeway on when service starts in comparison to the cafeteria. One thing not all students experience is driving in the truck; Campbell says that he wasn’t anxious about being on the truck until they started driving.
“You’re like okay, everything’s wrapped up; everything’s good,” he says. “But once you actually start driving and stuff and you hear it rattle, you’re crossing your fingers.”
I have very limited restaurant experience; I briefly worked as a hostess at Red Robin when I was 14 and then at the Barley Mill pub when I was 18. My experience is mostly working in coffee shops. I worked for the original Good Earth Coffeehouse back in Calgary before they franchised. Cineplex Odeon also had a restaurant and cafe in their arcade at Eau Claire Market; I ran the cafe. (Some of the Calgary Flames would come in; that’s how I met Jarome Iginla.)
If I were given the choice of working in a restaurant or coffee shop I would take coffee shop every time. I find it easier and less stressful, but the trade-off is that coffee shops tend to be very small and crammed tight with supplies.
Despite my experience working in the tight space of a small coffee shop, I wasn’t prepared for how confined the Cuisine Machine is. When the opportunity to go onto the Camosun food truck came along I had a nervous excitement. There were a few concerns I had: it’s close quarters and I didn’t want to get in the way. Also, I wouldn’t have the foggiest clue what to do. Worst case scenario: I would just hang back and observe.
Now, whenever I’ve eaten at a food truck I’ve seen maybe three or four people working in it. The day I was on the food truck, we had six. Chef Mark Cornett, Melanie Mace, who takes the orders, Professional Cook Training students Matthew Vose, Robin George, and Roman Gilby, and myself. Roman and Robin were at the back end of the truck on the fryer and flattop, respectively. I stood in the doorway to the cab of the truck next to Vose’s station. Cornett was in the middle of the truck next to Mace. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that squishy. I stood off to the side because our counter was really short and definitely not meant for two people to be at.
Prior to opening, I helped Vose set up his station. Nothing too difficult—I put liners in the containers and the sauces for the dessert in little cups. Vose’s job was to assemble all the orders. On the menu were rice bowls, shaobing (a sesame flatbread sandwich), pork wontons, and deep fried coconut milk.
I’m a big fan of chef Gordon Ramsay; he’s angry and I find it amusing. But one thing that popped in my mind while Cornett showed me and Vose how to assemble all the menu items was all the times Ramsay said, “You have to cut your menu down!” The food truck menu was small, simple, and flavourful. All the rice bowls were assembled the same. The same protein went on the shaobing. There was a very limited number of ingredients used in a variety of ways to create an amazing menu.
It was incredible to watch how the students worked. Timing and communication was definitely key. In order to strike that balance between pumping food out quickly and keeping food fresh there’s a small amount prepped and ready to be assembled, and by small amount I mean a few servings ahead of the bills. Gilby had to make sure there was enough sesame bread deep fried for the shaobing so that when an order came up it could quickly be passed down to Vose. Then Vose would add the slaw, pickles, and protein and—presto—it’s out.
The rice was made ahead of time, of course. George looked after the protein and gai lan. When it was ready it was put in a chaffing dish. As soon as an order came up Vose would grab a bowl, add the rice, gai lan, protein, add the oyster sauce and sesame seeds, and, bam! Served! There was a point during service when I watched Vose assemble four rice bowls at one time. He did it so effortlessly; it was really impressive.
I did eventually get in there. About halfway through service I felt I could handle it and let Vose know. I helped assemble one of everything. I couldn’t really put the rice, gai lan, and protein in the bowls as those ingredients were fairly central on the truck but I did add the oyster sauce and sesame seeds. I ended up sticking to the shaobing as those ingredients were in the corner where I was standing. For the remainder of service I made shaobing and Vose did the the rice bowls.
It was a lot of fun, but it’s not easy. With limited counter space, getting orders out quickly wasn’t just a matter of keeping customers happy; it was also a logistical matter. There just wasn’t room for containers to sit and wait for any of the ingredients. Space is so limited that when Vose was assembling four rice bowls we didn’t have space for any more orders.
Despite the fast pace and the fact that this is an actual class that I crashed, the atmosphere never got tense; it remained focused and upbeat. Even at the busiest moment, when there were a lot of orders, the students didn’t seem stressed at all. There was just more talking back and forth on what was needed, how much time was left on wontons, fries, or deep fried coconut milk. The students seemed like naturals.
Time flies by on the food truck. Service lasts about an hour and a half and is steady the whole way through. I’m grateful that I worked at Interurban and not Lansdowne: I stopped by to take photos of everyone while they were working at Lansdowne, and the pace is a lot faster than Interurban. I think I would have been a lot more intimidated and less likely to attempt to help out had I been on the food truck at Lansdowne. I was much happier taking photos and grabbing lunch before heading to class.
There was one really awful part of being on the food truck—it was mid-January. I don’t recommend being on a food truck in the winter: it’s very cold. At least it’s really cold on the front end of the truck, away from the fryer and flattop. Despite being warned and wearing a wool sweater underneath my chef’s jacket, I was still freezing. But there’s this wonderful bonus at the end of service—free food. At the end of my food truck shift I had a rice bowl and deep fried coconut milk.
I sincerely hope Cornett brings back deep fried coconut milk on a future menu because it is divine. When the Cuisine Machine was at Lansdowne I bought an order and shared it with Nexus staff who were in the office. General consensus: it’s a winner.
Everything on the menu looked delicious. Over the course of two days I tried most of it. If there was a day three I would’ve tried the tofu and eggplant. I tried a bit of the sesame bread but I didn’t try the shaobing as a whole. With how flaky it was, it didn’t seem like a good food option to take to class. (There’s the mess factor for me: I’m positive at least part of it would have ended up on my shirt. I also didn’t want to subject my fellow classmates to listening to me crunch into a flaky shaobing. I need to avoid lunchtime classes on Wednesdays in the future.)
The first food truck I ate at was back in 2013 at the Victoria Street Food Festival’s Food Truck-Up. On Friday afternoons in July and August food trucks would surround Centennial Square, and there was live music and a beer garden. People came down and tried the food at whatever truck they wanted to without having to pay admission.
In Victoria, 2013 was a big year for food trucks—that’s when it really took off. In 2009, there were only eight mobile food licences issued by the City of Victoria; by 2013, there were 26 mobile food licences issued.
“There wasn’t a single place where people could just enjoy these food trucks. You… had to be buying a ticket to go into a music festival because that was kind of a business model for a lot of these food trucks back in the day,” says Dylan Willows, who, with Misty Olsen, co-ran the Food Truck-Ups for four summers.
Since an event like the Food Truck-Ups had never been held in Victoria before, Willows and Olsen didn’t want to over-promise and under-deliver. More people showed up than anyone anticipated and some vendors ran out of food by the time lunch ended; there was a learning curve for everyone that first Friday.
Another important part of the Food Truck-Ups was that it was free to the community. Since food trucks mostly operated within festival grounds there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for the community to experience food trucks without paying some sort of admission fee. At the Food Truck-Ups people could go down to Centennial Square and enjoy the food trucks, and the live music, free of charge. The only cost was whatever they chose to spend on food and drinks at the trucks or beer garden.
I have photos of my food from the first Food Truck-Up (confession: I’m a recovered Instagram food photographer). Some of the food trucks that were at the festival are still in existence; a few now have brick-and-mortar restaurants. (Pig was one of the original food trucks that then crossed over to a brick and mortar restaurant, but has since closed; it will always hold a special place in my heart and in Willows’ heart. Their pulled pork poutine was legendary.)
Another food truck I like is Puerto Vallarta Amigos, one of the longest running and, arguably, most successful food trucks in Victoria. Their first food truck was actually started as a school project.
“I was doing my MBA with my brother,” says Puerto Vallarta Amigos co-owner Ramesh Espinoza. “We had an assignment about the business, a new business venture in Victoria. My brother and I, we noticed that there was no food trucks here in Victoria and we knew that it was a proven concept. And we knew that we had the background—my parents, they used to have restaurants back in Mexico. So it started as an assignment, but we soon realized that this could actually be a business and we knew that the demographic of Victoria was really good.”
Starting in 2010, before the big food truck boom hit Victoria in 2013, Espinoza and his brother bought the first Puerto Vallarta Amigos truck. It was successful enough they bought a second truck the following year. In 2012, they were able to jump to a brick and mortar location at Fisherman’s Wharf and one at Uptown in 2014.
Espinoza says that summers may be busy and bring in high sales but the winter months will be slow; not accounting for the downtimes could lead to failure. When it comes to suppliers, they’re all connected. The supplier needs a restaurant to stay in business so they, in turn, can stay in business.
Supply-chain issues and costs can be challenging. Some of the ingredients that make Puerto Vallarta Amigos’ tacos so delicious aren’t available here; they’re imported from Mexico. As well, certain foods can be volatile in price—for example, Espinoza points out there’s a shortage on lettuce, which has driven up their costs. The reward in juggling the shifting prices and seasonal sales as a food truck owner is the direct relationship with customers.
“We have a lot of feedback that is rewarding and when you’re working in a kitchen—I mean, this is sometimes—they let the server know that the food was excellent,” says Espinoza. “But that message doesn’t always get into the kitchen. So I think that’s the most rewarding thing, having a product, the customers they come back and let us know that it was good.”
Another benefit for Espinoza is that it’s a family business.
“Cooking with my mom and spending time with my mom and working on those recipes, and her sharing her stories when her mom used to teach her the little secrets here and there,” he says. “It is true, like everything is in the little details. So I think those are the best memory I have from working in Puerto Vallarta Amigos, just spending time with my mom.”