STREET food is a relatively new phenomenon in Queensland but Joel and Eileen Chrystal are attracting plenty of attention with their food truck as they drive around Brisbane.
When their pantech pulls up at traffic lights, its livery of bright red animals, skeletal framework highlighted, draws lots of pointed fingers.
"You can see people googling us on their phones," Joel said.
"Us" is The Bone Lorry and its business is dispensing succulent meat on the bone meals to a sophisticated Brisbane food audience.
British-born Joel was running a gastro-pub in the south of England when he met up with floor manager Eileen and the rest as they say, is history.
"We wanted to move to Australia where Eileen is from - she found it too cold in Britain and I loved Australia when we visited her parents - but we had to have a business to come to," Joel said.
"I'd seen food trucks when I lived in South America and loved the idea of them so we saved all our money."
After five years they had enough to emigrate.
Getting their custom-built truck made - it has a rotisserie from Paris that flame roasts 52 chickens in a sitting, an upright barbecue and a smoker - was the next challenge.
Begun in Los Angeles some years ago, thanks to the many people on film sets needing feeding, the street food trend was virtually unknown when the Chrystals touched down in Queensland.
It’s since built to a community of 15 trucks roving the suburbs of Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
As its name suggests, the Bone Lorry specialises in meat, particularly meat on the bone and secondary cuts.
It was Fergus Henderson’s Nose to Tail foodie classic and London restaurant St John, that serves up food “on the wild side”, which set Joel on the path to the idea of offering food such as slow-braised beef cheek, pulled lamb shoulder or corned beef hash.
“As well as being more tasty, these cuts have traditionally been cheaper because they’ve been neglected,” Joel said.
Ironically, as the movement towards meat such as lamb neck and pig trotters gains momentum, so is the price.
Joel uses a range of suppliers, predominantly the Hillman Meat Company and Hunter Valley Meats wholesalers, for their quality.
With secondary cuts, he says it’s difficult to have an option for grass or grainfed.
Last week he went through 60kg of beef cheek and six forequarters of pork.
They change their menus every week, keeping on the most popular from the week before and adding two fresh dishes, and their website and social media are the means of letting customers know where they’ll be next.
“We’ve got over 4000 Facebook followers and people are there when we open the hatch,” Joel said.
The only place they’ve had to move on from was a cinema screening of Babe at GOMA – it just didn’t seem right.
Visit The Bone Lorry Facebook page for more.
- This article first appeared in the August/September 2015 edition of Queensland Smart Farmer.
