Food TruckFriday’s during the summer in downtown Kalamazoo are awesome. I’ve blogged many times about Lunchtime Live put on by the Kalamazoo Parks and Rec department and I’m going to do it again.
J came home from work exhausted. She didn’t sleep well the night before and just wanted to take a nap. Taking a nap with a rambunctious three year old in the house is not always the easiest thing to do, so I suggested I take L to get something to eat then run a couple of errands. J seemed to like that idea.
There are quite a few food trucks that line up at Bronson Park on Friday afternoons for Lunchtime Live. I always have a really hard time walking by Arcadia’s Twisted Tail. They always have something super delicious. Just so I wouldn’t be tempted, I didn’t even walk by their trailer because I know they would have had something I wanted.
The first thing we actually did was head to Camzies Pizza to get a pizza for L. She loves pizza and so do I. I figured I would get her a cheese pizza then grab a sandwich for myself fully expecting her not to eat the whole thing.
Getting the pizza took much, much longer than expected. They claim that someone else took my pizza, but I’m pretty sure they just screwed up and never made it. After waiting 15 minutes and dealing with a cranky, hungry, crying child, I finally had to approach them and ask where my pizza was. They tried to blame it on a guy stealing my pizza even though when I went up to get the one I thought was mine, they told me it wasn’t the right order number. They ended up making another one real quick, but by then, I was really struggling with L. I grabbed the pizza then headed off to get something for myself.
The reason I went to Lunchtime Live this past week was to get a sandwich from Sloppy’s. I love the idea of food trucks that just specialize in one type of food. Most of the Kalamazoo trucks have rotating menus and not much focus. Sloppy’s is like one of those big city food truck’s that pick one thing and strive to get creative with it.
Sloppy’s specialty is sloppy joes. They have a few spins on the classic sandwich, but they all start with the same sloppy joe.
I ordered the Bacon Cheddar Sloppy. I hesitate to call it a sandwich after seeing it because there is no way to actually eat it like a sandwich. They put a toasted bun down to start, but then just smother it with the sloppy joe mix. The sloppy I ordered is then topped with bacon and cheddar cheese. It’s topped off with the other half of the toasted bun.
My family ate sloppy joes a lot growing up….although we just called them “BBQ” sandwiches. They were always simple though. It was just ground meat and Open Pit BBQ sauce. Always. Open. Pit.
This sloppy joe was not that simple. It wasn’t quite as sweet and it had veggies mixed in. Onions and celery were just as noticeable as the ground meat in the “sandwich.” The only way to actually eat this thing was with a fork. I tried to get as much bun, bacon and cheese in every bite as I could, but there was more meat than anything.
The cost for the “sandwich” was exactly $5 and it took less than five minutes for the double paper plate to be handed out the window to me. I like the Sloppy’s concept a lot….a concept they try to own. Pick one thing and do it well. Many of the Kalamazoo area food trucks all do the gourmet small portions of classic comfort food thing. Sloppy’s is out there by themselves standing out in an ever growing market.
Bacon Cheddar Sloppy
