Editorial: Truck more diverse foods in LI
Festival attendees wait for food at a food truck during the Escape to New York festival, Saturday, August 6, 2011. Photo by Jin Lee Credit: Newsday/Jin Lee
In the overcooked spaghetti mess of zoning and regulation that drives the spice of our Long Island life, Islip Town is boiling over an update to its food vendor rules. Almost three decades after it stopped issuing permits for vendors who park and stay, there are just a few left to feed a town of 340,000, and all of them peddle hot dogs.
How 1950s of us.
Out there in the real foodie-crazed world, every delight imaginable is offered by a four-wheeled vehicle. In this new culinary subculture, specials of the day are tweeted and websites map the locations of popular trucks. The entrepreneurs operating them are often immigrants making their native cuisine accessible and affordable, selling kimchee tacos or ackee and saltfish. Others with a particular passion target specialized audiences, such as vegetarians or cupcake afficionados.
But vendors who see a sophisticated market here don't have the resources to battle the bureaucracies, such as those in Islip, where even under an amended zoning code, no new permits have been granted.
Clearly, food safety inspections are required, and there need to be limits on where vendors can park to minimize nuisance and traffic. Instead of restrictions that make almost all sites off limits, however, towns should adopt more flexible polices -- especially in downtowns and off major thoroughfares.
Instead of just hot dogs, Long Islanders should be offered a more spontaneous and cosmopolitan roadside menu. hN
