On the corner of a soccer field near the Gowanus Canal in Red Hook, women wearing crisp blue aprons and hats bearing El Olomega logos serve Salvadoran dishes to a mixed crowd of Latino soccer players, Red Hook locals and Brooklyn gourmands. They prepare the food in a silver and yellow truck adorned with national flags, and glossy photographs of plantains and fruit flavored soft drinks from Mexico.
The women stand elevated above the heads of customers and take orders from a few feet away. The food is cooked out of sight inside the truck and then placed on the counter when ready for purchase. It is a scene that barely resembles the makeshift bazaar that once stood on this very same corner.
“The food is still really good,” says Kim Keaton who just sat down to eat a tostada. “But I liked the open style market a little more.”
El Olomega’s truck is among 10 food trucks stationed by the Red Hook Ball Fields, a popular venue for weekend soccer matches. For decades, this corner was populated with market-style stands serving traditional dishes from Central and South America to the soccer players and their families.
Then, in 2007, the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene stepped in. To meet sanitary regulations the food vendors were required to exchange their blue tarps and portable grills for mobile food trucks outfitted with approved equipment.
The changes were not without complaints from vendors and customers, but also brought unexpected benefits. The press coverage of the new regulations and social media outreach has turned the corner of Bay and Clinton Streets into a foodie’s destination.
“I think there is more variety. It’s a step up from the usual Mexican food,” says Jason Lombardi who is new to the Red Hook Food Vendors. “Everything is really good here—fresh off the griddle.”
Vendor Stephen Martinez, whose family sells Mexican food from a truck labeled Country Boys, says they are still adjusting to the transition.
“What we really don’t like is that it separates us from the customers and makes us feel more commercial. It used to be like the markets in Mexico where my parents were from, and felt more like a community.”
Since the 1970’s, a predominantly Latino crowd, from Mexico to Ecuador, congregated at the ball fields on weekends. Over the last few years, however, the customer base has diversified as a result of Red Hook’s growing popularity and recent waves of gentrification, in addition to the surge of new traffic flowing from IKEA.
“Before, our only customers were from South and Central America, and now more people are coming from the Red Hook area and other countries. When IKEA came, it brought more people to the parks. It brought more awareness to that area—or Red Hook in general,” says Martinez.
Fuentes has also noticed a shift in the ethnic makeup of the soccer players and food vendors.
“The Red Hook food vendors, their faces are changing given the demographics since 1974 when there were maybe more Caribbean and South American and Colombian to now more Mexican,” Says Fuentas.
Four out of the 10 food trucks are run by Mexican vendors, and serve the kind of authentic fare that is hard to come by at most taco joints around the city. At the ball fields, customers can nosh on tacos with chicharon (pork skin) or try one of the huaraches made of large tortillas filled with beans, picadillo, guacamole and sour cream.
Cesar Fuentas, the Executive Director of Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park Inc, says his family’s food truck, Solber, has updated some of the classic menu items to “accommodate the fusion and taste of New Yorkers.” More recently, Fuentas has added chorizo, the spicy Spanish pork sausage, to his papusas. However, a traditional papusa, says Fuentas, is a corn tortilla stuffed with cheese, pork, or loroco flower topped with pickled cabbage and tomato sauce.
Yezenia Ceron whose family owns Ceron, the Colombian food truck, says that along with fried yucca and arepas, they now offer hotdogs and hamburgers for the “kids and Americans.”
Marcos Lainez, who helps run his family’s food truck, is also tuned into the preferences of his expanded customer base. With the emphasis these days on healthy food, he’s looking into using organic cornflower for his pupusas.
Beyond menu decisions, the food vendors must turn their attention to the new demands of running the business. With the new regulations, the low-cost mom-and-pop operations gave way to more structured operations. New vendors not only need to raise the start-up capital for the permit, truck and insurance, but also must have their application approved by a non-profit organization, Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park Inc. In 2008, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation issued a 6-year operating permit to the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, which gave members of the committee the authority to decide who can join the organization and set up a food truck at the corner of Bay and Clinton Streets.
In a little over than a year, this permit will expire. The future of the Red Hook food vendors is uncertain yet again.
Lainez worries that new vendors with more money will vie for the permit and outbid the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park who currently pay $10,000 a year on the permit with a 5% inflation rate increase.
“The Parks Department is more concerned about ethnic food as opposed to money I think, I hope, because we wouldn’t be able to compete with someone who comes up and says I am going to put down $100,000 just to be here,” says Lainez. “What am I going to do? There’s nothing we can do. I hope they look at the food that we sell.”
As the future of this project hangs in the balance, some vendors are expanding outside the bounds of Red Hook. Vaquero Elotes and Solber Pupusas have set up satellite food stands at the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene and Williamsburg. And this season, El Olomega bought an additional truck and set it up across the street from the row of food trucks.
One Red Hook food vendor, Solber Pupusa, made the news this month with a triumphant win at the 2011 Vendy Awards on Governor’s Island. After competing against the best food vendors from across the city, Solber Pupusas, won over the panel of judges and took home the top prize, the Vendy Cup.
It has been a long time since the food at the Red Hook ball fields has been a local culinary secret, but now, the word is out and the recent victory has put the spotlight on the Red Hook food vendors once again.
More Stories on The Brooklyn Ink:
Brooklyn Eateries Dominate New York City Restaurant Guides
Do Restaurant Ratings in Brooklyn Make the Grade?
One Woman’s Commitment Brings Honor to Red Hook’s Fallen
Leave a Reply