A new food truck alliance launched in Sacramento last week, one that aims to fundamentally shift the relationship the trucks have with both restaurant owners and the city government. The group, Norcal Food Trucks (@EatNorcalTrucks), was started as both an alternative and a companion to the organization that has represented the food trucks so far – SactoMofo. While SactoMofo is run by food truck advocates, Norcal Food Trucks will be run by the truck owners, according to Chris Jarosz, the owner of the Wicked' Wich truck and one of the organizers behind Norcal. “We want to start representing ourselves,” Jarosz said. “We want to start showing that we have respect for the community…. We want

I had never heard of Sactomofo before the day of the event, but I'm glad I went. I tried a gyro for the first time and rice milk cinnamon ice cream, both of which were excellent. I didn't particularly care for the loud music because it made it difficult to talk to people. Though they might have made it loud on purpose to cover the sound of the cars above you, but I think it was too much. I researched that food truck aren't allowed to sell food within 1500 feet of a school because of student food nutritional worries. I can't help to feel that that doesn't make any sense. I food I ate at Sactomofo was healthier than any food I've ever eaten at a school cafeteria. It's also pointless to ban

Tuesday on Capital Public Radio’s “Insight” program, I talked to host Beth Ruyak about the arena deal, a local business’ history, a new bicycle event and the upcoming SactoMoFo 4. With Friday’s dissolution of the arena deal as it was planned, all parties involved are trying to figure out what to do next. While the Maloofs discussed the possibility of renovating Power Balance Pavilion, city leaders and Think Big Sacramento said Monday that they are still looking into placing an arena in the downtown railyards. A local grassroots group, Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork (STOP), is trying to gather the approximately 21,000 signatures required to place an initiative on the ballot that wou

Foodies of Sacramento will be gathering for a fourth SactoMoFo mobile food festival. SactoMoFo 4 will be held from 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. on April 21. There will be more food vendors, more activities, and more space than the previous events. The new location will be at sixth and W streets under the freeway. “We anticipate seeing a lot of smiling people with food-stained faces,” said Paul Somerhausen, managing partner of SactoMoFo. The first SactoMoFo festival was held in April of last year with 20 food vendors and a crowd of over 10,000 people at Fremont park. Whole Foods, SactoMoFo’s original sponser, will be sponsoring this festival. Access to SactoMoFo is free, and the food is pay-as-you

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

New for 2012!!  Soul of the City is an engaging dialogue series between the public and the design profession on issues of importance to the community and the region with focus on improving communication, understanding and collaboration (formerly known as the 4th Wednesday Design Dialogue series).  Organized by the AIA Central Valley Chapter and the ASLA California Sierra Chapter, the dialogues are listed below for the year and the topics have come directly from the public and the profession from one of our dialogues last year.  We look forward to seeing everyone again this year for some engaging conversation!  See you at the first dialogue on February 29th, where we will kick-off the serie

Foodies! You are invited to SactoMoFo #3 on Saturday, December 3rd, from 11am-6pm facebook.com/SactoMoFo Say what?? SactoMoFo (the Sacramento Mobile Food organization) has rounded up 7 Bay Area and over a dozen local food trucks, carts and other vendors for SactoMoFo #3, to be held Saturday, December 3rd, 11 am - 6 pm rain or shine at the Downtown weekend Farmer’s Market location (6th & W Streets, under the freeway). Stop by for lunch and stay for dinner! No tickets, no fees, just lots of great food and drink! How much?? Admission is 100% free! Just dress warm, bring small bills, a big appetite, and get your snack on!  I can win what?? Stitches ‘n Dishes will be raffling away a Wii and

Any decision regarding Sacramento’s controversial food truck ordinance – which currently limits trucks to operating a maximum of 30 minutes in one spot – will have to wait, since a City Council Law and Legislation Committee meeting was canceled Tuesday. “There’s a lot of stuff to look at in state law, and we’re trying to figure that out,” said Councilman Jay Schenirer, chairman of the committee. “A lot of it is whether it’s just legal or not.” One of the legal issues is that California Vehicle Code protections on commercial vehicles can arguably be applied to mobile food vendor operations. Operators of food trucks have been advocating changing the city ordinance for more than a year, sa

It’s 11:58 a.m. on a Wednesday. You cringe as your stomach emits a low rumble. Your eyes dart frantically to the clock, and you’re faced with that all too familiar dilemma: “What’s for lunch?” Well, fear not, good citizens of Sacramento. Help is on the way! With the help of a recently launched website, Grubtopia, hungry locals will now have the ability to access Sacramento’s diverse food scene with the click of a mouse. Creator Ali Tabatabai hopes that his newest creation will help provide a forum in which residents and local food providers can connect. Tabatabai noticed the success of both numerous food blogs and popular websites like reddit.com and was inspired to create a website tha

Hundreds of people gathered at our state’s capitol Thursday night to celebrate Mexico’s Independence Day. Voices rang proud and flags swayed high, as both the American and the Mexican national anthems were sung in tribute to the mixture of these heritages. Americans of all cultural backgrounds stood in solidarity, reveling in the significance of this day, when, 201 years ago, Mexico waged war against Spanish rule and tyranny. Still for many, the festivities were more than just remembering what happened two centuries ago, or eating too much of the amazing food provided by Sacramento’s mobile food trucks. Instead, they represented the struggle of Mexican Americans here in the United States

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

Just days after the successful SactoMoFo mobile food festival, City Councilman Rob Fong asked that an ordinance limiting mobile food vendors’ parking times within the city be reviewed with an eye for changing it. “What I’d like to ask everyone is to see if we would be willing to take a second look at the mobile food vendor ordinance that is currently on the books. I suspect that Law and Legislation is the place ... to see... if there’s a way for us to kind of accommodate what I think is a very positive and cool movement that is really going through a lot of other cities and has really positive benefits,” he said at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. The ordinance he referred to has been on

Before the events of this weekend were overtaken by Sunday night's historic news of Bin Laden's assassination, and then immediately by this morning's local news of the Maloofs' decision not to leave for Anaheim (yet), this weekend was already pretty great. Downtown and Midtown were bumpin' all weekend. I spent a lot of it on my bike, morning, noon and night, and I was not alone. I felt like I was in Sacramento future. But in fact, I was in Sacramento NOW. Despite terrible news early last week - Sacramento's job market is clearly, measurably the worst in the country, our new budget may have to cut public safety in a way we've never done, and our air quality is Top 10 worst in the nation -

"In a lot of ways I think food is starting to take the place in culture that rock and roll took 30 years ago, in that eating has become incredibly political. And just as the street has always dictated fashions on music and other things, it's starting to happen that way in food." –Jonathon Gold, LA Weekly food critic In 2008, the Sacramento City Council, under pressure from brick-and-mortar restaurants, voted 8-0 to pass Measure 5.68, which requires all mobile food vendors to relocate every 30 minutes, remain at least 400 feet apart and close at sundown. It was, at the time, effectively a death sentence for the Sacramento food truck. If food is rock ‘n’ roll, then Sacramento is Beaumont,