Charlotte's food truck rally is still rolling

Thursday night was supposed to be the end of the July Chow Down Uptown food truck rally, in the parking lot across from 7th Street Station.

But it's been such a hit that Moira Quinn with Charlotte Center City Partners says it will continue, probably once a month, for as long as the truck people want to do it. "They're driving, they're in charge," she told me at the 7Venth Market public forum.

By Friday morning, they had apparently picked a date for the return: Aug. 18. Same spot and same time (5:30 to 8 p.m. or so, or however long the food holds out.)

The food trucks certainly have grown. There were nine or 10 out Thursday night, from Emma (say it EEE-mah) Merisier of Southern Cake Queen to my old colleague Dan Huntley of Smoke. I hit Roaming Fork for the pulled pork sandwich, got a very tart lemon frozen-fruit bar from Lollie's at Huntley's truck and did a dueling-cupcake tasting at Southern Cupcake (Summer Bliss, lemon cake with raspberry buttercream) and On the Go Cupcakes (the Elvis -- banana cake, peanut butter buttercream and candied bacon).

Favorite find of the night: Deep-fried Deviled Eggs from Roaming Fork (left). Those turned out to be more like egg salad (but good egg salad, very yolky) coated in panko and fried, then served with a honey mustard dipping sauce. You got three big ones for $3.

If you want to keep up with where the food trucks are roaming, you can follow most of them individually on Twitter.com, or follow @cltfoodtrucks.

The food is great, but eating in a parking lot isn't all that charming in July. Here's hoping the trucks keep rolling in October, when it will be a lot more pleasant. In fact, given our usually-mild winters, couldn't we have a food truck rally in February?

Have an opinion on the new uptown market?

The new city market project -- ie, the market going in the space formerly known as Reid's in 7th Street Station -- is starting to take shape. Market manager Christy Shi has had a couple of meetings with potential vendors, and the market is on schedule to open in October.

So what is the city market? Shi's vision is for a combination food market and farmers market. There will be fresh, local produce, but there also will be a restaurant space and local food vendors. There could be space to can or freeze excess food for use in hunger-relief programs. There could be consignment arrangements for farmers to have produce there while they are back in their fields growing more.

What would you want -- or not want -- in a city market? Tonight is your turn to speak up. Shi is holding an open house for the public from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the 7th Street Station market space. Shi promises it won't be a lot of sitting and listening to people talk. Instead, she plans interactive discussion with things like "if you wrote a bumpersticker for the market, what would it say?"

Also on the schedule: Shi will unveil the name for the market, and a sketch of the logo.

Make an evening of it: The Chow Down Uptown food truck rally is going on across 7th Street from 5-9 p.m. The first 100 people to show up at the market open house will get a voucher for one of the dessert trucks.

Getting there is easy: You can park outside of uptown and take Lynx or park free for 90 minutes in Seventh Street Station. Shi says there also will be free parking in the lot across from the market.

See you there.

Food trucks are ready to roll

Has the food truck phenomenon finally rolled in to Charlotte? You can check it out tonight at 5, in the parking lot on 7th Street across from Seventh Street Station, at the Chow Down Uptown Food Truck Rally. At least eight trucks are signed up to be there, but that may grow.

I wish I could be there, but I already had a tight schedule between the end of the work day and the start of the Neko Case concert in Knight Theatre. I’ve also had my share of food truck experiences lately.

Last year, when I was in New York for the James Beard Awards in May, I had gotten a bead on a food truck rally at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. Fellow food soldier Andrea Weigl and I set out nice and early. But the Web site was unclear about the actual address – happens a lot in N.Y. social media, I’ve learned. By the time we found the right spot, the rally was well underway and the lines were stretching roughly from the Hudson River to Long Island. We stood in line for 40 minutes just for the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. It was worth the wait for a Salty Pimp (chocolate and caramel and soft-serve ice cream sprinkled with sea salt) and a Bea Arthur (hard to explain but it involves very tall soft-serve and crushed vanilla wafers). But that was all we had time to try.

This year, I was in the same place at about the same time. And now the Hell’s Kitchen Food Truck Rally is happening every other Sunday through the summer. This time, fellow food soldier Debbie Moose and I set out early with very good directions. We were almost too early: The trucks were still pulling in. But that meant we only had short waits to gather a full picnic.

Big Gay wasn’t there, tragically. They’re getting ready to open their own bricks-and-mortar store, the true food truck measure of success. But there were plenty of others: I counted Rickshaw Dumpling, Luke’s Lobster, Gorilla Cheese (grilled cheese sandwiches and deep-fried macaroni and cheese balls), Lloyd’s Carrot Cake, Kimchi Taco, Cinnamon Snail vegan food, and Kelvin Natural Slush.

Debbie grabbed a spot in the line at Gorilla Cheese and I fanned out to hunt and gather from the trucks that didn’t have lines. We met up at the curb and sat in the shade, spreading out a picnic while a street musician with a portable keyboard played jazz. New York food came to find us for a change. We had pork and chive dumplings, carrot cake, grilled muenster with proscuitto on challah, a big lobster roll ($15, but big enough to split), and spicy ginger slushies. My favorite thing was the deep-fried mac and cheese bites, which were crunchy and hot and tasted particularly good with a sweet onion dipping sauce.

If you’re in New York this summer and you're interested in something different, check www.hellskitchenfleamarket.com to see if it’s a food truck Sunday. Don’t get confused by the addresses – you want the flea market at 39th and 9th Avenue. And you need to get there by 10:30 if you want to miss the worst of the lines.

And if you’re at the Charlotte food truck rally tonight, drop me a line, kpurvis@charlotteobserver.com, and let me know how it went. If you send me a jpeg, I’ll try to post it here next week. Have fun, kids.