Gongfu Bao street food cart defends title as king of Asian steamed buns
Originally filed at roneade.com
The second annual Ottawa Food Truck Rally attracts a bumper crowd on a more spacious lot outside a university campus.
Archive note. This page preserves work first published on roneade.com between 2014 and 2016. Ron Eade died in August 2015; nothing on this site is new writing in his voice, and the reporting below is presented as a dated record rather than as current coverage. Restaurants, prices and staffing described here reflect the moment the piece was filed.
The result
Terek Hassan's Gongfu Bao cart, specialising in stuffed and steamy Asian buns, successfully defended its championship title against sixteen rival street food trucks and carts at the second annual Ottawa Food Truck Rally on the Saturday. The event drew an estimated two thousand visitors to a campus parking lot.
The winning dish was barbecue pulled pork with hoisin, crispy shallot and coriander, served with Asian slaw on a house-made steamed bun.
It was the cart's second consecutive title. In 2013, at the first rally, judges — Eade among them — had awarded Gongfu Bao Best Small Plate, while another operator took Best Large Plate with grilled chicken, beef and lamb kebabs with Asian slaw. That operator could not attend in 2014 because of mechanical problems with the truck. For the second edition, judges were asked to pick a single Best Overall Plate rather than separate large and small categories, and every operator was asked to keep prices at or below $4.
The economics of a four-dollar plate
The price ceiling is the detail worth pausing on. Admission was $10, with food and drink extra, and every competing kitchen had to produce a dish good enough to win a judged competition for four dollars or less. That is a very different discipline from the plated competition cooking covered elsewhere in this archive, where a winning dish involved foie gras and eight bottles of wine in the marinade.
Hassan's cart normally traded at the northwest entrance to Confederation Park, Wednesday to Friday, from noon to three.
What the winner said
"I'm extremely happy Gongfu won the title for best food," Hassan said. "First, I have to thank my crew for working so hard to make this happen. I was genuinely sad that our rivals couldn't make it to defend their claim to the trophy — they would've been stiff competition and I'm excited to take them on next year. All the carts and trucks brought their A-game and there were several with a shot at the title. I'm really glad all our hard work paid off for a second year in a row."
Design, and honourable mentions
Best Truck Design went to a frozen-treat operator with a classic, playful vehicle motif, taking a title held the previous year by another truck. Judges also gave an honourable mention to a colourful cart notable for its bright undulating banners.
On food, Eade singled out two more. A Barrhaven couple working with a chef produced what he described as a perfectly executed fish and chips — lightly breaded fried haddock with home-made crisps combining sweet potato, beet and regular potato. And a chef-and-partner operation served what he called the most flavourful, if not the richest, poutine he had sampled: fresh home-made fries under shredded duck confit and a deeply caramelised onion gravy.
He had tasted fifteen plates with two remaining when he noted his own condition partway through the judging, which gives a fair sense of the format.
Street food in the archive
Ottawa's street food scene was still consolidating in 2014, and the rally functioned as its annual shop window. Food trucks and carts operate under municipal licensing and public health inspection rather than the restaurant regime; Ottawa Public Health publishes the special-event and mobile-vendor food safety requirements that apply.
Elsewhere in the archive, the same appetite for unfussy, well-made food at an accessible price surfaces in a Westboro chef-owner's argument for a $15 to $28 main course.