Update: Well, that didn’t last long. A week after posting this review I found out that the owners of StrEats are closing up shop. That’s right, they’re closed. Oh well, I thought they had a good thing going…
After our weekend of wandering around Austin eating BBQ and sampling several of Austin’s many food trucks, you’d think that we’d start to be a bit worn out on food trucks. Well, we weren’t. About a week after we got back from Austin, we decided that the weekend weather was nice, and we wandered over to White River Junction, Vermont to check out Streats, our area’s latest food truck.
That’s right, the Upper Valley actually has several food trucks (some of which I’ve even review here, like Wicked Awesome BBQ, but I’ll admit I’m way overdue for reviewing Vermont Crepe and Waffle and Mama Tina’s Tamales), of which Streats is the newest arrival. Billing themselves as a “mobile canteen”, Streats is currently located in a mostly vacant lot at the corner of Prospect and Bridge Streets, just west of the bridge to West Lebanon, New Hampshire (for those familiar with the area, it’s across the street from the Listen Center). Decked out in a nicely appointed food truck festooned with a “Hot Wheels” style logo, they’ve got a few picnic tables for seating if you want your food there. They are still new enough that they are tweaking their hours (I’ve gone over there twice at times I thought they’d be open, to find the place shuttered, for instance), but they are starting to find their groove and regularize their hours.
Menu-wise, it immediately becomes apparent that Streats is going for the “upscale food truck” approach to cuisine; while they’ve got the basics (burgers, sandwiches, and tacos, for example), they’ve also got quite a few menu items that aren’t present in your typical food truck, like gnocchi with brown butter and nutmeg sauce. They almost always have some sort of fresh-made flatbread on the menu, as well as several intriguing specials (mostly posted to their facebook page) like steak tacos, specialty hamburgers (like a recent one, the “Hot Mess”, with bacon, fried egg, Cabot cheddar and gravy), and the like.
So we looked over the menu, and decided that I’d get the burger with Vermont cheddar and jalapenos, while Carol opted for the chicken sandwich. And we’d share an order of the gnocchi.
Well, it turned out that they didn’t have gnocchi that day…. so we just got the sandwiches. While disappointed that I couldn’t get the gnocchi I was craving, I certainly wasn’t disappointed in the sandwiches (which had them cut in half, so Carol and I both got half a burger and half a chicken sandwich), although they were a bit on the pricey side (which my trips to Chicago and Austin reminded me that everything is expensive back here at home… so I can’t really fault them here). The burger was a solid performer: grass-fed beef, cooked the way I love a burger: with a nice crisp crust but a still-moist and still pink, juicy interior. With some nice Vermont cheddar, this was a good, solid burger. Carol’s chicken sandwich was also nicely crisped, fully cooked, but still juicy. Nothing fancy, but a well-executed chicken sandwich. Where they did really shine was the chips. These weren’t no random cheap chips from the Sysco truck, but fresh-cooked crisscut-style housemade potato chips, which had a good solid crunch, a nice potato flavor, and weren’t overly greasy or salty.
Overall? My major impression is that I need to go back and check out Streats when they’ve got everything going, since I really do want to try their gnocchi, and a special. From the basic sandwiches we got, they obviously know what they are doing. Hopefully I can sample these soon.
