Most food trucks are restricted by their size; it's difficult, if not impossible, for a cramped kitchen on wheels to offer a very big menu. That's not a concern at Fast Foodie, though. If anything, the local traveling kitchen was too big: a 24-foot trailer larger than many bar kitchens. That size created problems of its own, owner Jackie Valent Lucca explains. The trailer was hard to park on city streets and even at some outdoor festivals, and in return for the considerable fuel it guzzled, its generator created a lot of noise.<br /><br />This year Lucca found an environmentally friendly solution to those problems: bike distribution. Fast Foodie's trailer will still function as the business' mothership and serve customers at large festivals and other functions, but most of the Downtown service will be handled by a fleet of electric bikes. Each of the four bikes has been specially outfitted with a small generator to keep food at serving temperature and a compartment that can hold about 100 of Fast Foodie's signature "Globacos."<br /><br />A Globaco, as its name implies, is a taco with a global-fusion bent. "I love to travel all over the world, and every time I go somewhere I want to try making a dish from where I've been," Lucca says. "So when I started the business, I was thinking about ways to distinguish myself and offer something different from burgers and pizza, but that was still easy to eat on the street, and realized that tacos were the perfect medium for a variety of global food. There were already other trucks that offered Korean barbecue tacos and items like that, so I just used the same idea and took it one step further."<br /><br />Fast Foodie offers six or seven Globacos at any given time, among them a Jamaican option with curried beef, rice, broccoli slaw and a special hot sauce; a Puerto Rican version with adobo-marinated pork, fried plantains and rice with pigeon peas; and a coconut curry chicken taco inspired by Thailand. The most colorful of the bunch is the Bourbon Street, a reinterpreted jambalaya with spicy andouille and bell peppers.<br /><br />New to Fast Foodie this year are global potato chips, a rotating selection of homemade chips seasoned with Caribbean, Ethiopian, Greek, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Mexican or Arabian spice blends.<br /><br />Downtown workers wondering where to find a Fast Foodie bike at lunch can reference a complete schedule at thefastfoodieonline.com. Unusual for food trucks, the company also offers complete nutrition information online; most of the Globacos are less than 300 calories.<br /><br />"We take a lot of pride in offering something wholesome," Lucca says. "People are always surprised to learn that these Globacos really aren't all that bad for you."
