Finally Catching Up?

[Tethered Kite]

I'm currently listening to "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan on Public Radio.
They are discussing food from trucks which is being touted as the latest craze. In discussing the coasts, notably Los Angeles and New York, the host made the remark that the trend is spreading inland and now, even in the Midwest, you could get ethnic food from a truck.

I laughed. This is one area in which our cosmopolitans need some enlightenment. In the heartland people have been eating their personal ethnic favorites from vehicles probably as long as trucks have existed. I doubt that it's even a new concept in cities on the coasts, way back to the first taco truck that served farm laborers or the first delicatsen foods served to factory workers at noon.

I'm not sure where the idea started in the Midwest but I'd guess that it began at farm auctions when people came from some distance in their slow moving vehicles on dusty roads and required feeding since they would probably be there and on the road all day.

I understand the idea that some ethnic food is more exotic than other in the sophisticated mind but in the Midwest, depending on where you were you might be served, for a few examples, runzas in NE, bratwust and saurkraut in Southern MN or WI, pasties in Northern MN.

C'mon Neal, don't agrarians count? You have no jump on the historical aspects of this, uh, charming option for dining al fresco.

Comments?

Or do you have any examples of things with which you've been long familiar that seem new and unique to others?

[silenus]

Fish tacos. A few years ago they were a SoCal thing, then they became a big thing nation-wide. Those of us who have been surfing and drinking down Baja way have known about them for decades.

They still don't come any better than from a street vendor in Ensenada.

[Tethered Kite]

I have had fish tacos in Ensenada! Fun place.

Back in the early 70s. My husband totally turned up his nose. "Fish don't belong on tacos."

And, yes, those have finally made their way to the Midwest where he still looks askance.