Nearly a year after the inaugural SactoMoFo mobile food festival designed to raise awareness of the city’s restrictive mobile food ordinance, the law hasn’t changed, but city officials and mobile food vendors will meet early next month to discuss the issue. Currently, the ordinance limits food trucks from stopping in one space within city limits for more than 30 minutes at a time. “We want to talk to (restaurateurs and mobile food vendors) and see what’s the best policy on this,” said City Councilman Jay Schenirer, chairman of the council’s Law and Legislation Committee. Any change to the ordinance will have to go through the committee before it can go to the full City Council for appro

The locally owned Willie’s Burgers plans to launch a food truck – the Willie Wagon – in Sacramento this week, carrying burgers, chili burgers and fries. “We’ve always thought a food truck was a good way to get the product and what we do out to people,” said Bill Taylor, owner of Willie’s Burgers. “I’d started developing the idea of a Willie Wagon since 1995, but it’s been in the back of my mind.” Willie’s Burgers opened at 16th and Broadway in 1991, and a second location opened in Carmichael in 2004. Now, taking the burgers to offices and events with the food truck is proving a good addition to the business, Taylor said Friday. “It’s been terrific,” he said. “We follow basically the sam

Mikuni Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar will celebrate a quarter century in business May 15, and co-owner Taro Arai said that after the touch-and-go nature of the first five years, the business has come a long way. “The first five years, the more we worked, the more money we lost,” he said. “I still cannot believe it’s been 25 years. We’re so lucky to have all the support we’ve had.” Now with nine restaurants in the greater Sacramento area, Arai said the business will be expanding in 2012, and while more brick-and-mortar restaurants are likely in store, the next thing people will see is a food truck. There is no set timeline for rolling out the food truck yet, but Arai said he and his

After less than a year on Sacramento’s streets, local food truck Drewski’s Hot Rod Kitchen is adding a brick-and-mortar establishment at 908 15th St. that blurs the line between sports bar and food truck. The Republic Featuring Drewski’s is set to open the week before the Super Bowl (Feb. 5), and Drewski’s owner Andrew “Drewski” Blaskovich said he’s excited to be part of the growth in downtown Sacramento and to offer a late-night food and entertainment spot, closing around 3-4 a.m. on the weekends. “It’s going to be a sports bar,” Blaskovich said. “We’re going to have 12-15 TVs, pool tables, video games and – we’re hoping – skee ball.” The four pool tables will complement old-school vid

Coast to Coast Sandwiches – Sacramento’s newest food truck – brings what the owners say are some of their favorite sandwiches from across the country, including a South Philly cheesesteak and a Reuben. Co-owners Robert Ramos and Sean Figueroa – not able to find an exact match of their favorite sandwiches from east of the Mississippi – decided they had a niche, and they looked to open a business. Both graduated from culinary school, where they initially came up with the broad strokes of the Coast to Coast Sandwiches idea. Ramos was born in New York and lived in Florida, while Figueroa’s family is from Louisiana, and the Louisiana po’boy sandwich is his mother’s recipe. “The Reubens here

On September 15th, at the Capitol, 12 awesome food trucks are getting together to help celebrate Mexican Independence Day! I know what you are thinking, isn't Cinco de Mayo supposed to be for that? Oh contrare! September 16th is the actual day. If you went to the last SactoMofo food truck festival at Fremont park back in April, then you know just how crazy popular this has become in Sacramento. It was packed from the moment it opened until the time it closed! The organizers weren't expecting such a huge crowd, and unfortunately most trucks weren't prepared to handled that many people. Wait lines were horrendously long, and a lot of people stood in line for hours just to hear that the food

A weekly gathering of food trucks will kick off Thursday at Tognotti’s Auto World as Mini Burger Truck, Mama Kim on the Go and Drewski’s Hot Rod Kitchen hold the first event organized by the fledgling Sacramento Food Truck Alliance. The alliance formed about a month ago and is looking to be a self-policing organization for food trucks that will hold operators to a high level of service standards and host events in which alliance members can participate, said Davin Vculek, operating partner of Mini Burger Truck. “I encourage people to come check out (Thursday’s gathering),” Vculek said. “For the most part, I think citizens want this. For the people who have never given it a shot, come dow

The future of mobile food trucks in Sacramento was discussed Monday night at the first in what will likely be many meetings between mobile food vendors, “brick-and-mortar” restaurateurs, city leaders and advocacy groups. The meeting, held at The Kitchen restaurant, 2225 Hurley Way, was not open to the public, City Councilman Steve Cohn said Monday morning. An ordinance limiting food trucks to operating within the city to 30-minute stops has been contested more vehemently lately. The SactoMoFo mobile food festival April 30 drew an estimated 10,000 people, prompting a closer look at the ordinance. Several gourmet food trucks, including Mini Burger Truck and Wicked ’Wich, have recently beg

A “wicked” new presence is fast approaching the Sacramento food truck scene and bringing with it a broom-wielding, raven-haired witch, mounted LED television screens and towering, East Coast-inspired sandwiches. The Wicked ’Wich, as owners Tom Boerner, Chuck Hewitt and Chris Jarosz have dubbed their sandwich shop on wheels, has been in the planning stages for more than a year now and is finally ready to hit the streets. Each wicked sandwich, which includes a customer’s choice of meat, cheese, mild and spicy “potions” (condiments) and locally sourced produce, will be topped with crisp French fries and a heap of non-mayonnaise-based, house-made coleslaw that Jarosz described as “tangy, yet

Looking for a burger on-the-go, minus the drive-thru window? Mini Burger Truck might be parked right up your alley. Literally. At the end of this month, MBT will begin traveling the central city and surrounding areas, bringing gourmet burgers to various lunchtime locations, despite an inconvenient ordinance. This city ordinance limits mobile food vendors to 30 minutes per location. So in accordance with the legislation, MBT will move at least 400 ft. (about a block) every 30 minutes. “We anticipate being able to serve a good amount of people in that time because we’re targeting to have really fast-paced service times,” said MBT operating partner Davin Vculek. In order to keep customers