We’re not sure when or even why this happened, but recently food trucks have become really popular.

Yep, food trucks, roach coaches, mobile food poison dispensaries; those dirty looking trucks that hang outside construction sites and car washes selling mystery meats that even dogs would be afraid to eat.

Or at least that’s how most of us used to view food trucks.  But times have changed.

Food trucks aren’t as plain as a Denny’s on wheels anymore.  They sell more than just defrosted burgers and overcooked scrambled eggs.

Food trucks have themes.  They sell gourmet versions of a particular genre of food using high quality ingredients.

But you have to be in the loop to find them.  Usually the only way to find out where these food trucks are located is through word of mouth or to follow them on Twitter.

And even then, if you arrive late, you might stand in line for an hour… and the food will still sell out.

That’s why we were really excited to attend the first ever Orange County Foodie Fest this past weekend.

The event pulled together 49 of the top food trucks from Southern California and put ‘em all in one lot so 8,500 people could try some great food that’s normally hard to find.  There was supposed to be 50 trucks, but the dim sum truck didn’t show.

We spent five hours jumping from truck to truck, spending about 20 minutes in line at each one, but it was totally worth the achy feet and scorching sunburn.  Here’s what we sampled:

Nom Nom Truck

This was by far the most popular truck at OC Foodie Fest.  We hit this food truck first and we’re lucky we did because the wait was ridiculously long by mid-afternoon… and we can see why.  They serve amazing bánh mì, which is a Vietnamese sandwich served on a French baguette and stuffed with cilantro, pickled carrots, peppers, mayo and choice of meat, the best being pork.

Piaggio On Wheels

Ever since the Buenos Aires trip we’ve been craving Argentine food.  So we were stoked to find out about Piaggio On Wheels.  The skirt steak taco with chimichurri sauce and the pulled pork slider were nice, but it just wasn’t the same.

White Rabbit Truck

Southern California has a big Asian population and a big Mexican population, so it makes sense that a lot of food trucks like White Rabbit fuse the two together to make Asian tacos and burritos.  The craze started with the Kogi truck, which serves Korean BBQ tacos, and now White Rabbit is gaining popularity for their Filipino tacos.  They were just okay.  The pork sisig, which is fried pork, was too salty and chewy, and the chicken adobo was a little dry.  But this was probably just a bad sample.  They were more concerned with their Man Versus Food-style eating challenge where contestants had to eat a 6-pound burrito in 30 minutes.  Just look how big they were:

Chunk-N-Chip Cookies

It was getting pretty hot, and since there was no shaded area, the only way to cool down was with an ice cream sandwich.  Here’s why that tactic didn’t necessarily work: Chunk-N-Chip makes ice cream sandwiches using fresh baked, hot-out-of-the-oven cookies, then smashes a scoop of ice cream in the middle.  The problem is that the warm cookies melt the ice cream, making for a messy yet delicious affair.  I went with the brownie cookie with mint chocolate chip ice cream, and Jackie had the chocolate chip cookie with rocky road ice cream.  Yes, they were as dense as they sound.  They took second place in the “Best of the Fest” competition.

Ta Bom

Dessert wasn’t going to stop us from having more food, so we went to the Brazilian food truck and got a sirloin steak taco and a chicken taco.  They were both pretty good but the service was unbelievably slow.  And I’m still afraid of what the side effects are from drinking that Guarana drink that tasted like Red Bull.

Seabirds

We needed a break from all that dense food, so we went for something that usually scares us: vegetarian food.  The beer battered avocado taco with tequila-jalapeno sauce was refreshing, but the real hit was the jerk jackfruit taco, which had jerk seasoned jackfruit topped with green salsa.  It kind of freaked me out at first because the taste and texture was oddly similar to skirt steak, but once I got my head around the fact that I was eating a fruit and not meat, I felt proud for taking the healthy alternative.  Plus it helped me ignore my mental calorie counter, which was reaching a frightening number.

Longboards Ice Cream

It was getting inexplicably hotter as the sun was setting and we knew we had to finish the day with dessert, so we stopped at Longboards for a coconut ice cream bar dipped in Ghirardelli dark chocolate and rolled in coconut shavings.  It really didn’t have the refreshing effect I was expecting, but it was pretty damn good.

The trucks were separated into sections with funny names based on cities in Orange County, like Eaterheim for Anaheim, Foodport Beach for Newport Beach, and our favorite, based on Huntington Beach…

We didn’t get to try other places like the sushi food truck called Fishlips…

…or the French fry truck that served sweet potato fries with Nutella and peanut butter, or the double-decker bus serving World Fare…

…or the pizza by the slice truck, or the crepes truck…

…or even the meatball truck called Great Balls On Tires…

But overall, the OC Foodie Fest rocked.  Yeah, it was a pretty expensive day — tickets were $12 a person, parking $15, and each truck cost between $6 – $10 — but we look at it this way: we’d wind up paying way more in gas to drive to these food trucks in parts unknown in L.A.  So we’ll pay gladly a premium to have ‘em all in one place.

Next time, though, I won’t wear a belt.  There’s really no point.  Unless you want to see if you can actually snap a belt by ballooning in size.