Social justice in food trucks’ history
I’m reading Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice edited by Julian Agyeman, Caitlin Matthews, and Hannah Sobel. It evaluates the history of food trucks, with case studies that show the different approaches to regulate food trucks. Food trucks have been facing complex regulations and discrimination since the mid-1900s. I’ll talk about how hard it is to grow a food truck business in the past decades. From tacos to Vietnamese noodles, from hot dogs to Korean barbeque, food trucks reflect diverse cultures and cuisines representing a mixed ethnicity. In 2008, growing up in a Korean-American family, Chef Choi, the food truck pioneer, rented a truck and started selling Mexican tacos stuffed with Korean BBQ meat in Los Angeles. His Seoul Taco Truck got so popular that he opened more trucks and eventually his own restaurants in other cities. Choi showed the world that Korean food doesn’t only exist in Koreatown and that tacos can be something special. However, before...