Downtown Raleigh's Food Truck Rodeo May 12, 2013

Spring has FINALLY arrived here in Raleigh after a VERY long winter! This has only been my 3rd spring in the area, and I was spoiled the first two years with spring-like weather arriving in early March.  Not that this year has been typical. I've heard that the month of March was colder than January, which is not how it's supposed to be.

We had some glimpses of spring a few weeks in April, and then had about 10 days of cloudiness and rain. Of course, it happened to be when my family was visiting!!  Oh well, it's finally nice out and we have some travel planned for May, June, and July, so stay tuned for lots more blogging.  I'll have to admit that I got sick of posting about restaurants all winter - so I needed a break from the blog.

But, in my first post in a few weeks, I am excited to share our experience at downtown Raleigh's Food Truck Rodeo this past weekend.  The weather was a perfect, sunny, 70-degree day. I realize this is another food post, but it's different because we walked around downtown, checked out all the trucks, and ate our food outside with all the other festival attendees.

Here's a recap of our experience...

Lots of hipsters - young and old - enjoying the food trucks

First stop - Blue Sky Dining

Blue Sky's Interesting Menu

Our DELICIOUS sweet potato stuffed burger -

the highlight from the day (or maybe we were just super hungry when we arrived)

Waiting in a very long line at Pie Pushers

It was difficult deciding on the specialty slices

We went with a cheese (Colin's always gotta compare it to NYC pizza) 

and a pesto sausage slice

We also tried a pesto garlic knot

The long line at Pie Pushers was not indicative of quality. The cheese slice was not that great.  It just didn't taste like the sauce was high quality.  I liked the pesto sausage - but I really enjoy goat cheese on almost anything.  The garlic knot was not worth the $1.

Then we went to the ladies in the southern cooking Chick-N-Que truck

We planned to get chicken or barbeque, but couldn't resist trying an ostrich burger

The bread was terrible, but the ostrich meat was very tasty. 

The little extra spice it had ground into the meat added some nice flavor.

Since we still hadn't eaten any BBQ, we went to Stoke and Smoke for our last stop

Since all three previous meals were heavy on the dough/bread, 

we decided to try one of the plates

The meal was a huge letdown. The meat was soggy and tasted dull 

and both the coleslaw and beans lacked flavor

Once we started eating the BBQ, we realized it might have been a food truck we previously tried at a festival in Apex last fall. That added to our disappointment that we didn't pick a better place with all the choices at the event.  This added to the need to blog about the event. I had to write about it so we wouldn't forget what we tried at the next Rodeo. Thankfully there are three more this summer and fall.

We made one last attempt at a food truck, hoping to get some ice cream from the Chapel Hill creamery, but it was getting late in the day and the line was too long.  Instead, we decided to head home so we could catch a few hours of sun at the neighborhood pool.  Did I mention that I'm SO EXCITED for summer weather!  

For those that have experienced the Triangle's food trucks before - what truck do we have to visit next time?

For everyone else - any big plans this summer?