Trailer dash: Which Sydney food trucks deliver the best restaurants on wheels?
Food trucks bringing flavours on the move are no flash in the pan: for many foodies, they're the taste of the future. That’s why some of western Sydney’s best eateries are loving the trailer dash.
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Food Trucks Australia founder Ray Khouri grew tired of running his Surry Hills Italian restaurant Pizza E Birra, so in 2015 so he hit the road on board a food truck.
“I was sick of going through the same patterns and seeing the same customers and then I thought ‘we could build a food truck, a restaurant on wheels’ and the benefit of having a food truck is you move around – south coast, north coast, southwestern NSW.
“With food trucks it’s all about the journey; one week it could be the Blue Mountains, it could be the Hunter Valley.
“Everything is fresh. Nobody goes to Woolworths and buys their produce from Woolies. Some of the food trucks are worth between $100,000 and $200,000.
“Food trucks are the future.’’
While some foodies are self-taught in the hospitality industry, many are run by trained chefs.
Khouri, of Woodpark, promotes 185 trailers in NSW and 360 across the continent, taking comfort food to the masses from the big smoke to Dubbo and regional Australia, where there is a massive appetite for the “flavours of the world”.
Many trailer owners are from western Sydney, whipping up the melting pot of flavours they grew up with in a tiny kitchen on wheels across Sydney and the state.
Food trucks love taking advantage of breweries west of the city, including the Brew Mountains Brewery at Valley Heights where tucker is a welcome pairing with alcoholic beverages.
Using his skills in recruitment, Khouri matches the best mobile eateries for public events.
He says the novelty to eat outside was fuelled by Covid, and has driven the strong demand for food trucks.
“In 2020 everything closed and food trucks came out of the woodwork,’’ he said.
Khouri wants to see a designated food truck park at Parramatta, just like Grazeland and Welcome to Thornbury in Melbourne.
He already has one, Joshua Eats, about to debut at Strathfield Park.
In western Sydney, the cuisine served is as diverse as its community, from bold Middle Eastern fare to lively Jamaican dishes and Instagram-worthy desserts. Here are some of the best:
DRIPPIN’ DESSERTS
When they’re not selling stunning frocks at their South Wentworthville boutique Alina Collections, Linda Sandie and her daughters Natalie and Alannah are loading plates with fried ice cream, doughnut fries and other elaborate concoctions at Parramatta where their food truck, Drippin’ Desserts, is mostly based.
Since November, the Greystanes trio began the business at Pitt St and roved around festivals.
“We love making desserts at home, we’re big entertainers at home so desserts were always a hit for us,’’ Natalie, 27, said.
“It was something we spoke about through Covid and it was at the forefront of our minds. We had the finances to do it. It’s been good. We got a lot of traction on social media with bloggers and food reviewers coming out.’’
Vanilla fried ice cream comes with nine topping choices including fruit Nutella and strawberry.
The signature dish is the doughnut fries, “like a cinnamon doughnut, but fried form, so it’s like eating hot chips”. The newcomer is the brownie cup: a jar layered with brownie slices, ice cream and strawberries, drizzled with Nutella, Lotus Biscoff or salted caramel.
Three months young, Drippin’ Desserts’ debut has been strong.
“I think this is just the beginning for food trucks,’’ Natalie, whose other job is a team leader at a bank, said.
“As the months go on we see the demand for events. It’s a mobile business, you’re not fixated to a shop or a shopfront.’’
EL’S FRIED CHICKEN
The phrase “winner winner, chicken dinner” has rung true for former Knafeh baker Elias Sarkis, who capitalised on putting his twist on poultry when he opened his business five years ago.
“I just knew there was an opportunity for a chicken truck – everyone was opening beef burgers and hot dogs and I needed to be a point of difference,’’ the Austral resident said.
“Fried chicken’s not really big in Australia yet — besides KFC — so I took the risk and it’s paying off. We’re about to build our third food truck and a couple of stores this year.’’
Drawing inspiration from prolific LA food trucks, he decided to turn up the heat with Nashville chicken, known for its spicy kick.
Heat levels are so high that one dish requires brave diners to don gloves and eat it at home. It took 14 months to perfect. It includes cayenne, ghost and Thai peppers.
Sarkis concedes he can’t handle it, but his brother-in-law adores it.
“I’m surprised he doesn’t have stomach ulcers, he just loves chilli and he’s my guinea pig,’’ Sarkis said.
“But at night my nose is full of chilli and I struggle.’’
Another big seller is the slider with soft taco-like shells substituted for traditional brioche burger buns.
A good dose of love is poured into the tenders – chicken is brined for 48 hours, marinated in buttermilk, vacuum sealed and put into a coolroom before being dipped into pre-mixed flour with spices, dunked in buttermilk and flour again and then straight into the fryer.
“I only allow one person besides myself to do the chicken and that’s my mum,’’ Sarkis said.
“I’ve tried to get the chicken poultry places to do it – it was just inconsistent, I wasn’t happy with it.
“With a beef burger you can just put the beef patties on a grill or a flat top and just cook en masse. But with fried chicken, we batter, we flour, everything is fresh to order – nothing’s pre-made. I’m very pure about my product.’’
French toast, featuring a chilli honey, also makes the cut for signature dishes that go “gangbusters” and sell out.
Sarkis has earmarked locations, including Wetherill Park, for a bricks and mortar shop to expand the business.
Sarkis does not sugar-coat all aspects of running a restaurant on wheels.
“It’s very hard in Sydney, just because of the obstacles that councils give you, and it’s pretty hard here, you can’t pop up in certain areas. In America you can just pop up on the side of the road and serve,’’ he said.
Sarkis has worked multiple jobs including as a wedding MC, but given he spent years living on top of a pizza shop (his parents Tony and Sally owned Pizza King chain), it’s not surprising he took up hospitality.
Fast forward a few decades and his dad is now trading barbs and serving up meals in the food truck.
“There’s a lot of swearing and people laugh,’’ Sarkis said.
IRIE
When British expat Joshua Barua started a new life in Australia in 2010, he hankered for the taste of the Caribbean he grew up eating west of London. But it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that the classically-trained chef decided to start whipping up street food in a truck with his partner Jessica Barkhan.
“I always wanted my own restaurant,’’ the Baulkham Hills resident said.
“During Covid it was far too much of a risk working at restaurants. Many restaurants weren’t trading, but food trucks were operating because they could offer a takeaway service.
“I’ve never worked in a Caribbean restaurant, but cook it at home.’’
Using his experience from helming a catering business and a cafe, and working with acclaimed chef Josh Niland at Fish Face, as well as working at former Sydney CBD steakhouse Prime, the 34-year-old left his most recent gig at a gelato and cake manufacturer to establish Irie.
Barua’s Bangladeshi, Burmese and British lineage also meant he was familiar with the profile of Caribbean cooking and its fusion of exotic flavours inspired by Indian and the West Indies.
He serves it up with an “up-market edge”.
“It’s got lots of inspiration from British cooking and Indian cooking and native island Caribbean cooking,’’ he said.
“There’s lots of spice. I do tone down the spiciness a little for the Australian palate … but try to keep true to the flavours.’’
Irie’s bestseller is the classic jerk chicken, marinated with garlic, onions, thyme, all spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, chilli peppers and cooked sous vide (under vacuumed to retain moisture) before being chargrilled over lava rocks where the fat juices drip on to the stones are then drift into the smoke for intense flavour.
Popular Jamaican dish escovitch — pickled hot peppers bathed in lime and citrus juices — also feature on the menu.
Since debuting the business in March 2021 and going full time in October that year, the emerging cuisine has thrived and Irie has become a full-time gig.
The truck often ferries its cargo to breweries, where a cold beer can complement the tangy fare and transport customers to the Bahamas for a “Caribbean vibe”.
Barua loves working with brewers, from Botany to the Blue Mountains.
“They’re passionate about flavours, it’s not your standard beer,’’ he said.
STRIPPED GAZA STREET FOOD
Long before vegan was trendy and almost mandatory on menus, Ramzy Shublaq was embracing it every day as part of his mum’s Palestinian cooking growing up in Newcastle and Granville.
When he established Stripped Gaza Street Food with childhood friend Roby Sawan two years ago, it was only natural that meat-free fare dominated the menu.
“Everything’s vegan – not purely by design, but I’d say a lot of Middle Eastern dishes are vegetarian or vegan, so we realised when we made up the menu ‘OK, this is vegan so we’ll just stick to the vegan thing,’’ he said.
A joiner by trade, Shublaq has been a lifelong fan of his mother Hanan’s cooking.
“Growing up my mum had always made fresh falafel, she used to mince the chickpeas and all the ingredients herself,’’ he said.
“She stopped cooking elaborate dishes probably 10 years or so ago and I just haven’t really had nice falafel since then.’’
So it was time to shelve the carpentry tools and share the classic falafel recipe Mrs Shublaq used to deploy to feed her six children.
“It’s literally like-for-like her recipe exactly to the tee,’’ Shublaq said.
“She came to a lot of our early events and critiqued it every time until where it got to now so it’s been finely tuned.
“The trick for us I’d say is per 2kg of chickpeas we put about 1.5kg of onions in the mixture, so almost half of it is onions and that is what gives it the nice softness inside.
“It stays good for an hour. Afterwards you can still eat it; it’s not a rock.’’
The signature falafel pocket has lettuce, tomato, onion and cucumber and radish pickles with mint and tahini sauce, encased in a soft pita pocket.
“We really try and make it restaurant quality as much as we can and we get that kind of feedback in response, so I think it’s working,’’ Shublaq said.
The mouth-watering Gaza pocket is stuffed with fried zucchini and cauliflower coated with special seasoning and tossed with onions, pickles and tahini sauce.
The falafel snack pack has chips loaded with tahini and coriander. Batata harra (spicy potatoes) are deep fried, tossed with garlic, chilli, coriander, salt and a bit of lemon juice.
After occasional appearances at marquees and food markets, Stripped Gaza became permanent.
“We just gained traction from there; we got really, really positive reviews,’’ Shublaq said.
“Mum’s given it the thumbs up and all clear and passed her standards, and we decided to take it to the next step and next level and buy a trailer and here we are now.’’
Ramzy left the joinery workshop permanently three months ago and Sawan does the odd shift as a pathology courier.
The Strathfield mates take the trailer out between Thursday and Sunday, with three out of four weeks spent at breweries.
KERBSIDE CREAMERY
When Cecil Hills’ Jonathan Israfil lost his job as a civil engineer during Covid almost three years ago, he turned lemons into, well, Biscoff cheesecake on a stick and started his food truck business with his younger sister Gabrielle.
The 24-year-old tossed in her job working at a men’s clothing shop and put her plans to study teaching on hold to join her brother selling over-the-top desserts and American-inspired subs.
“It’s unique because no one else does what we do and it’s like a flavour bomb,’’ Israfil, 30, said.
If you’re rocking up to one of Kerbside’s two trucks, there’s a good chance you’re about to order its signature Biscoff cheesecake on a stick.
Cakes take two days to make before being sliced, impaled on a stick, frozen, coated in Biscoff crumbs and topped with the biscuit.
Desserts are not the only food produced in the trailer.
The signature savoury dish is the Philly cheesesteak sub.
“It’s our take on an American-style sub,’’ Israfil said.
“You saute the capsicum and onion, then you add that to your steak, you chop up your steak finely obviously then you add provolone to the top of that, melt it all and whack it on a toasted roll.
“It’s the best thing ever – like a really high quality steak but a party in your mouth.’’
A housemate roasted garlic mayo further flavours the sub.
The business has flourished. The food truck is mostly stationed at Carnes Hill Marketplace and the business took off so much the siblings opened a shop, Kerbside Eatery, at Eastern Creek Quarter in late 2022.
As self-taught cooks, the siblings flew in a chef from Melbourne to guide them on the shop.
Like most food trucks, Kerbside is reliant on social media to let the throngs know where to go for a feed.
“We literally park at the most obscure parts of the world,’’ Israfil said.
While he enjoyed engineering, Israfil favours a life on wheels.
“It wasn’t that I wasn’t passionate about the engineering work, I just really do enjoy the freedom of working for myself and being responsible for my own income and all that sort of stuff, your own success – it all comes down to you.’’
Among the events they plan to visit will be the Royal Easter Show and Glow festival at Sydney Zoo at Bungarribee.
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Originally published as Trailer dash: Which Sydney food trucks deliver the best restaurants on wheels?
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