Ireland’s first food truck festival will be hosted at The People’s Park in Limerick; the event is expected to attract 40,000 people. 60 food trucks from 14 different countries will be brought over via the European Food Truck Association.
Cuisines will include Southeast Asian, French, American and Mexican. A Belgian artisan chocolate truck, which will prepare chocolate dishes from scratch, a Lobster burger truck, and a truck that will serve shark and crocodile are going to be the highlights. There will also be a truck that will specialises in cooked insects.
Alan Woods, owner of Mexican Food Dudes—a food truck based in Limerick, aims to familiarise the Irish with food truck culture, which is a trend that hasn’t caught on yet. Since the announcement of the festival, food trucks operating around Ireland have approached Woods, since has set up an association to professionalise these trucks. Woods is also currently working with the Limerick City Council to set up a permanent street food area.
According to Trev O’Shea of Bodytonic, which manages the food truck centre in South Richmond Street, Dublin, authorities and consumers have become more receptive to the idea of street food. Food trucks are not meant to be fast food, but rather a place where people can go to buy food from stalls that may not be found elsewhere.
Chef Jess Murphy believes that it will take another ten years to diversify food truck culture. Through working with those who have seeked asylum in Ireland, she hopes that the new wave of immigrants will join in and help introduce more global cuisines to the country.
The festival will go on from the June 1-5 this year.