Now that we’re starting to roll into summer, that welcomes one of my favorite warm weather activities: going in search of food trucks! Central Maryland has plenty of them, and throughout the summer you can find a gathering of food trucks just about every night of the week. And as of 2018. that includes attending Food Truck Fridays at Elkridge Volunteer Fire Department!
Elkridge Food Truck Friday Details
The Elkridge Volunteer Fire Department opened in March 2018, and Food Truck Fridays is one of the first series of community events they hosted. Every Friday during the summer, hungry guests can visit the upper lot of the fire department from 4-8 PM and have their choice of a number of different dinner and dessert options.
Note for 2020: Due to COVID-19, the Elkridge Volunteer Fire Department has suspended all events until April 27th, and has stated on their website that Food Truck Fridays will return in late May at the earliest. Read more in the EVFD’s COVID-19 Update.
The fire department is located at 5700 Rowanberry Drive Elkridge, MD 21075, and if there aren’t spots available in the lot, there is room to park on the shoulder of Rowanberry. The event was very family friendly, and as you can see on the left in the above picture, dog-friendly as well! There is some seating available inside the (air conditioned) fire department for those who wish to dine in.
Eats
The six trucks they had in attendance this evening were:
- Anegada Delights Caribbean Cuisine
- Greek on the Street
- Taco Bar
- Wanna Pizza This
- T & J Waffles
- Mike’s Gelato
These trucks will be rotating with some other local favorites throughout the summer. The listing of trucks each week can be found on the fire department’s website or Facebook page. I decided to check out two trucks for my first visit – one for dinner and one for dessert!
Anegada Delights Caribbean Cuisine
Anegada Delights first launched in 2011, and operate both as a food truck and catering company. They also have a permanent location in Columbia, MD. Their full menu offers a lot of variety, but for the food truck they stick to a few Caribbean staples.
This was a very popular choice with the crowd. Even though I was ordering around 5:30PM, they’d already run out of plantains for the evening (so if you have your heart set on those, get there early!). I went with orders of the curry chicken and spiced jerk chicken and sides of rice & beans and zucchini.
The curry chicken was amazingly tender, with a mild curry sauce and small chunks of potatoes stirred in. The rice underneath was seasoned really well on its own, but was made even better when it soaked up the sauce. Even the zucchini was delicious, still retaining a bit of a bite to it, and could easily hold its own with the other vibrant flavors.
Equally delicious was the jerk chicken – and they weren’t kidding when they mention the spice. It’s a heat that builds the more you eat it, so the rice and zucchini were great accompaniments for this as well. I’m sure the plantains also would have been wonderful to balance the spice, lol. The chicken in this dish was equally tender as its curried counterpart, and both items were enough to make me want to visit them again.
Mike’s Gelato
Mike’s Gelato is one of the newer food trucks, having opened in 2016. Mike Mullinix studied abroad in Italy for a semester in college and fell in love with the culture. After graduating, he decided to combine that passion with his entrepreneurial spirit, and bring authentic gelato to Central Maryland. He even studied at the Gelato University in Bologna, Italy! I have a huge sweet tooth, so as soon as I finished eating dinner I knew I was going to stop back here.
Pistachio-flavored desserts are some of my all time favorites, so I knew immediately that’s what I was going to order. The flavor was a little more subtle than I was hoping, but the pistachio clearly came through and the whole pistachios that were mixed in was a nice touch. The texture was PHENOMENAL. It was creamy, rich, and held up reasonably well in the Maryland humidity. I was also able to get a sample of my second choice option, coconut chocolate chip and you can be sure I’m getting a full cup of that next time. Amazing.
Overall Thoughts
For being the very first night of this event, and at a relatively new facility, Food Truck Fridays at Elkridge Volunteer Fire Department was such a fun evening. Everybody from the patrons, to the food truck operators and the volunteer fire department members all had smiles on their faces the entire time I was there. If you’re in the area, I absolutely recommend swinging by and checking it out.
