Tasty Up Trailer Tour
Yesterday was the most awesome tour to date. If you missed out on the first-ever Tasty Up Trailer Tour, co-organized by Addie Broyles and me, you’re about to be jealous.
Since it was a choose-your-own adventure tour, each of the 500 or so attendees had their own unique experience. Below are some highlights from mine taken with my brand new Canon s90 point-and-shoot camera.
Tasty Up Tour Coordinators
Addie met me at around 11:30 a.m. at La Boite before she set off to Trailer Perk. The tour officially began at noon and those two spots were where Addie and I greeted folks and passed out name tags.
Austin Kleon designed the Tasty Up logo while sitting at his kitchen table.
Austin is an amazing artist and is coming out with a book of his blackout poems this spring. Check out his web site.
La Boite gave all Tasty Up tourers free french press coffee.
For me, La Boite was a highlight — I loved meeting owners Dan and Victoria and sampling their gorgeous pastries like the salted caramel macarons pictured above, almond croissants, and chocolate macarons with fresh strawberry cream.
Dollar. Dollar. Bills, y'all.
I love how prepared Sara and Cass from the J.B. and Sandy Morning Show on Mix 94.7 were with plenty of $1’s. You can check out their awesome Tasty Up tour video on Sara’s blog.
La Boite is made from an old shipping container
It was the first sunny day in a while and we sprawled out on the lawn to enjoy it, meet new friends, and catch up with old ones. Even Mark Meyer, architect of La Boite, was hanging out there that morning.
The Tasty Up was dog friendly…
This is one of Laura Kelso of Dishola's golden retreivers.
And it was child friendly too!
Ryder is Kay Marley-Dilworth of the Austin Examiner's baby.
It was bike friendly too but I didn’t get any blog-worthy photos of cyclists.
Next up for me was Franklin Barbecue, located north of 32nd Street on the east side of the I-35 frontage road.
Yes, that's the interstate upper deck in the background.
This brisket was amazing — the burnt ends make my mouth water with fond memory. Aaron Franklin told me he rubs salt and pepper all over it and begins smoking it at 9 a.m., taking it off 24 hours later.
This is Aaron Franklin
The BBQ here is dry rubbed of course but they offer three types of house-made sauces alongside. They plan to bottle and package them for sale soon but in the meantime, gave my friend Dana a small plastic to-go container of the Espresso sauce.
The espresso sauce is made with local Owl Tree Roasting beans.
The next logical choice was another BBQ joint – Oldschool BBQ & Grill. Owner Dan, his son Danny, and their business partners dish up brisket, sausage, burgers, fresh-cut fries, a mac ‘n cheese wedge, and more at their school bus turned kitchen.
Jackie Huba and her dog Mini place their order.
Crowd favorite was the mac ‘n cheese wedge and I was impressed with the fresh-cut, twice blanched french fries with cajun spices.
With an hour and a half to go until our final stop, we decided to hit odd duck Farm to Trailer, Gourdoughs, and Austin Brevita — three trailers sharing one lot on S. Lamar just south of the Alamo Drafthouse.
Odd Duck Pork Belly Sliders (and lovely server)
I couldn’t resist checking out Gourdoughs…
Awesome design
And there was no way I could miss checking out the special $2 Tasty Up doughnut hole sampler. They included naughty and nice (cinnamon sugar), slow burn (cream cheese with habanero jelly), flying pig (bacon and maple icing), shortcake (cream cheese and strawberry), ODB (cream cheese filled topped with icing and coconut).
Heaven is a ball of fried dough
Adam took a shot of me seeing what everyone else was up to on the tour. We created a #tastyup hashtag to stay in touch. This was a great way to get recommendations on food, lines, and more.
Yes, I am addicted to social media
We rolled out to the patio of Liberty Bar to hang out, drink beers, and try to fit some Thai-fusion goodies from East Side King into our too-full bellies.
We met new friends,
Nibbled on beet home fries, thai chicken kaarage, rice, and cookies,
The busy East Side King guys are also chefs at Uchi
And I was interviewed by Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon from the Statesman for a short video he made for their web site:
And with that, we headed home to change into elastic pants (I wish – I had to go to a formal event) and make plans to visit the trailers we missed some day soon.
To get updates and early notice about future Tasty Tours, join the Tasty Touring Facebook group. For information on Addie’s monthly events, join the Addie’s Eat Ups Facebook group.
I’m also playing around with Gowalla, a location-based iPhone app, and set up a Tasty Up trip there with ten of the 16 participating locations. You can also print out a Google map of ALL of the businesses and check ‘em off as you visit. Blogs about past tours with ideas of other spots to check out can be found in the Tours category on this site.
More photos from the day are posted here:
Those were my highlights from the tour. I’d love to hear about your experiences and feedback as well.
Tags: aaron franklin, addie broyles, austin brevita, austin kleon, BBQ, brisket, Canon s90, coffee, donuts, east side king, franklin barbecue, french fries, gourdoughs, la boite, liberty bar, odd duck, oldschool bbq, owl tree roasting, past, pastries, Tasty Up, trailer perk, twitter
