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Zagat: Popular Food Trucks Add Brick And Mortar To Mix
06/18/2012 04:30 AM
By: Kelly Dobkin

Two popular food trucks that have gained quite the foodie following are now setting up shop in brick-and-mortar establishments. Zagat editor Kelly Dobkin filed the following report.

The Treats Truck was founded in 2007 by Kim Ima, and has been serving up freshly-baked items like cookies, brownies, muffins and other desserts mobile-y to customers ever since. But recently, Kim decided to open a brick-and-mortar version of her popular truck on Court Street in Brooklyn.

"I have always loved the idea of having both a truck and a shop and it was always my dream. It was so much fun to design a place from scratch. It was like a fantasy come true to say ‘I want sparkly chairs, vintage-looking chairs.' And I had to have swivel stools at the counter. So it just feels very fun and homey," Ima says.

In addition to the shop's already popular sweets menu, the Treats Truck, Truck Stop offers up a new menu of savory items for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"Opening a shop opened up all these new possibilities," says Ima. "We serve breakfast and lunch all day long. You can get breakfast for dinner, or you can get lunch for breakfast and I’m having a lot of fun playing around with the sandwiches and the salads and all the fun things that we make in addition to the treats."

Next up, the Bistro Truck's Moroccan-inspired sandwiches have been popular with Manhattan's lunch crowd since hitting the streets three years ago, but now owner Yassir Z. Raouli is going brick-and-mortar with his new Lower East Side eatery, Rustic L.E.S.

Zagat: Popular Food Trucks Add Brick And Mortar To Mix

“It’s becoming very hard to operate a food truck in the streets. Not 100 percent what influenced me to open up the space, but was one of the decisions," Raouli said.

While the eatery won't open for a week or so, Rustic L.E.S. has plans to serve up a menu of French-Moroccan inspired plates in this fittingly rustic 19-seat space.

“I’m going with a lot of stuff that I ate growing up," says Raouli. "We’re doing a whole-roasted lamb, we’re serving sweetbreads. I’m hoping that people will come and enjoy themselves and come back and tell their friends."

For more information, visit Links blog.zagat.com .




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