Meetings of the five-member Transportation Committee of the Los Angeles City Council tend to be rather quiet affairs. But earlier this month, 150 people crammed into Room 1010 at City Hall to debate LA’s latest gastronomic craze: gourmet food trucks.
To their fans, the trucks are a welcome addition to the city’s food scene, parking outside shops and offices at lunchtimes and congregating on Friday nights to create mini food festivals. To their critics, they are a menace, stealing trade from restaurants, creating litter, lacking proper licences and regulation, and clogging the parking places of entire streets.
“We don’t want to shut down the trucks but we do need to work this out,” says councillor Tom LeBonge. “Many of the truck operators want free enterprise and don’t like government regulation, but we have to act before it becomes a bigger problem.”