Off The Beaten Truck

Food Trucks Are Dubai’s New Cool, and Several Indians Have Joined This Culinary Caravan. On the Menu Are Shawarma-parathas and Goan Chorizo Wraps

- Phorum Dalal

Pasta, please,” I say.

“Penne, spaghetti, red, white?” the Asian lady at Mia Strada asks, urging me to hurry up. The queue is long, and she has no patience for my indecisiveness.

“Penne, in red sauce,” I reply.

Mia Strada is one of the many food trucks parked at Dubai’s Kite Beach, whose white sand and green waters attract a steady stream of surfers and water-babies. It was also amongst the multiple venues to have hosted the 17-day Dubai Food Festival between February and March this year.

Back in Mia, once my order is punched, the chef gets to work, enthralling me with his theatrics. He tosses the penne into an iron skillet and then dramatically puts it into a parmesan wheel. Ten minutes later, I finally devour my meal settling into a white-washed wooden bench across Mia. A pungent kick from the cheese hits my palate. I love it.

As hunger subsides, my surroundings grow on me. I notice the queue outside Mia. It swells, shrinks, and swells again. Most food trucks are equally busy. Both locals and tourists keep gravitating towards them, clutching onto their minty coolers, fruit slushes and rainbow-coloured popsicles.

Food trucks do seem like Dubai’s new cool. They pop up, serve, and move on. Last Exit, a first-of-its-kind food truck park came up last August, an indication of this glamorous desert city’s booming food truck culture.

Interestingly, in the truck-hopping I undertook for the three days that I was there, I discovered that several Indians, too, have hopped onto Dubai’s culinary caravan. What’s on their menus? Well... there’s shawarma filling inside flaky parathas, fiery Asian woks, and Goan chorizo in wraps.

FROM PAV BHAJI TO HAWAIIAN BURGERS