Are the New Food Trucks the Domain of the 'Upper Crust'?

Border Grill Truck at this week's ArtWalk in DTLA. Photo by current events via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

Getting a taco from a truck isn't new by a longshot--it's been a way of life here in Los Angeles for hundreds of thousands of people for years and years. Lunch trucks, push carts, and street vendors are old hat for many residents and longstanding threads in many neighborhoods' fabrics. And yet "food trucks" are a buzzword--a trendy buzzword at that--and the people behind the buzz are often thought to be, well, a little "bougie."

Now "food trucks of all types are offering high-end cuisine at street-level prices," explains an article on abc7.com. The latest, among many, to get tongues wagging are trucks like the one from Border Grill, Fish Lips Sushi (with flatscreen monitors displaying the menu), or Dosa with their South Indian fare. The Border Grill's Susan Feniger (the maven matriarch of Street, a sit-down restaurant based on global street vended food--a flip in the trend if ever there was one) says the current state of the economy makes cheap, good eats on the fly a no-brainer: "You've got hundreds of people on the street. We're selling a product that we think is high quality at a great price. So that is a way you can do great volume," she told abc7.

A lot of the trucks use Twitter (a bougie trend, too?) to broadcast their roving locations, making the hunt part of the thrill of the eats. A lot of the food is stuff you can surely get sitting down, but some, like KogiBBQ, have made innovations (and oft imitated) in their approach to the expected truck fare. And we here are no strangers to embracing the trend; we've lauded Locali's Icycle, Get Shaved's Hawaiian Ice, the Coolhaus ice cream sandwiches among many. Are we bougie--"upper crust," as abc7 says--too? Hmmm... or just mmmmm...?