Trying Many Different Foods at the Woodbridge Food Truck Festival

SiROCKSNY.comThis past weekend was the Woodbridge Food Truck Festival at the Woodbridge Mall Sears parking lot. I saw this event advertised when I drove down Route 1 on the mall’s interchangeable billboard.

I love food and have done a couple of food trucks, so that’s enough incentives for me & Jess to come on down. The event was presented by a company called SiROCKSNY.com, which is weird since New Jersey isn’t Staten Island, though Woodbridge is right over the Outerbridge Crossing (no more than 15-20 minutes).

The Woodbridge Food Truck Festival happened rain or shine… and it rained, so good thing we brought our umbrellas! It also helped that there was a tent set up with tables for just such an instance. It was a very well-run event, but you’re here to read about all of the food I ate. Well, here it is!

Hispanic Food

The Lab Food TruckOne of the foods I’ve really enjoyed more over the year is Hispanic food, whether it’s Mexican or otherwise. The first truck we ate from was The Empanada Monster, a Colombian food truck that offered a variety of foods and had a long line. We decided to try their namesake empanadas, 1 chicken and 1 beef, & they were delicious for this monster appetite!

Not to mention the spicy but tasty green & red salsas that came along. Just the opposite of spicy was the first dessert-type food of the day: a sweet arepa topped with dulce de leche, aka mozzarella-stuffed cornbread with Nutella on top. To my shock, the cheese and Nutella combination worked along with the subtle flavor of the cornbread when mixed all together.

And here I initially passed on Arepas last year. I guess chocolate-hazelnut spread was the missing ingredient from my first experience trying this Hispanic food.

The second place we tried was The Lab Food Truck based on the line alone. I like how their beaker logo is actually a spoon and a fork, neither of which I used for my order because I opted for the shortrib taco.

This taco combines sweet-chili braised shortrib with cilantro ginger-lime slaw, fire-roasted scallion sauce and hoisin. The meat was so well cooked that it melted in my mouth, while the other ingredients balanced quite well together for an ideal taco on the go. I also saw that The Lab will be opening a restaurant in Kenilworth in the very near future, which I’ll definitely go to.

More Savory Treats

Mama Dude's Food TruckOf course, there were so many more places to try (seemingly half of which were Hispanic). We opted not to go to the burger truck, soup truck, BBQ truck or the typical fried fare since we wanted something that we can’t get on a typical day.

That’s why we chose to go to Mama Dude’s Food Truck. They were offering their courses at $6 or 2 for $10, so we opted to get 2 different things: the English pea risotto and a pork belly & polenta dish. The English pea risotto was so smooth that it went down like butter… it may have been the winning dish of the day, though I think the shortrib taco is a tie.

However, the definitive losing dish of the day was the pork belly and polenta. I will start by saying that the pork belly was very well cooked and well seasoned. However, there was not enough of it to cover up the blandness of the polenta… even though it did have a little sauce on it and did contain a not-so-sharp cheese. If there was more sauce or definitely more pork belly, perhaps I’d feel differently about this Mama Dude’s dish.

The final savory food items came from a place called I Got Balls. I love puns and do enjoy a rice ball once in a blue moon. Let this be 2 blue moons since these I Got Balls offered 2 unique flavors for these treats: pesto and buffalo chicken. I’m a big buff chix fan, but I think the pesto was just as good… which is really saying something. Too bad they had a business paper and not a business card.

Dessert Sampling

Khalila's Corn KrushThe last part of the day containing partaking in some free samples from a couple of dessert vendors that were ironically not food trucks. The first one for me was Just One Cookie, which is a high-protein snack (14 grams, which to me isn’t high since I take in at least 30 grams per meal).

I tried the chocolate and it tasted good, but I suspect that it might have too much sugar for my liking. I can’t find any nutrition info on the Just One Cookie site, which I feel is important for your target audience looking for a high-protein snack replacement. The $3-per-cookie price point seems reasonable for other products on the market.

The second was an interesting concept called Corn Krush, which is run by a Marist alumni like me… we even high-fived since I was wearing a Marist shirt. As the Corn Krush name says, they offered a few sweet cornbread and we decided to try the CinnaMaize.

Not only do I love puns, but I love cinnamon as well… and they really Krushed it with this sweet treat. And I also crushed it with that pun… bam.

I’d definitely do the Woodbridge Food Truck Festival again next year and hopefully the weather will be better to try some more new foods.

Business Card Count: 35,764

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