Tag Archives: meals on wheels

More meals on wheels

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We are way too early for picking up Bennie’s mum from the airport.

Chronic earliness is a Weir family trait, but this is much more than a sometimes unhealthy obsession with punctuality or a matter of 10, 20 or even 30 minutes.

It’s a bungle – I got the time wrong, so we left home an hour before we had originally planned.

So after going around and around a few times in the endless dance of avoiding extortionate airport parking fees, we embrace the moment, relax and head up the highway to Sunbury a ways just for a look-see.

Just past the roundabout we come across what appears to be a new and improved parking spot for those watching the planes go by – well, it seems more organised than the last time we were hereabouts.

The wind today has contrived to have planes departing in flight paths that take them right above the parking spot.

So close you feel like you can reach up and pick them out of the sky.

Whoosh!

Of equal interest to us, though, is the magnificent soft-serve ice cream vehicle and one of its slightly smaller siblings.

Interestingly, both are flying flags of Australia and Turkey.

We leave the road test for another day, upon which we will doubtless find out exactly what constitutes “soft-serve gelati” and whether, indeed, it is any different from your standard soft-serve fare usually heralded by the chiming muzak of Greensleeves arriving in our neighbourhood.

We dig the hell out of the artwork and signage on both vans, though.

Note, for instance, the image of Pinocchio getting ready to tuck into a hot dog!

Taco Truck

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Phone: 9023 0888

Taco Truck, its snaggy cousin, Le Sausage, and other such recent phenomena may have mobility on their side, but such things have been around forever, of course – Mr Whippy had wheels, too, y’know!

Besides them, there are the ubiquitous kebab trucks, pie carts of yore, icecream/soft drink vans wherever and whenever there is a public gathering, the famous and revered Footscray Station doughnut operation and many more.

Still, having missed the Taco Truck’s visit to Newport in mid-November, and knowing its visits to anywhere in our vicinity are somewhat rare, I am keen to grab the opportunity in Essendon, corner of Primrose and Albion streets to be precise.

I pull up and park a few minutes after the advertised open time of noon to find the Taco Truck crew still doing their prep chores.

Already a handful of people have gathered for their taco hit.

In the time I am having my lunch and taking photos, a lot of people have come, eaten and gone.

Whatever its flaws – there’s a bit of griping about the enterprise’s unreliability, waiting times, running out early and so on at its Facebook page – its apparent the social media/eating connection is a winner. 

The Taco Truck sells three kinds of taco – chicken, potato and fish – for $6 a pop.

I do as I’m sure just about all their customers do and order the combo of two tacos and corn chips for $12. A bottle of mandarin Jarritos pushes the price of my lunch out to $16.

This is a pleasingly slick and smooth operation – or at least it is today – and my meal is ready within just a few minutes.

The corn chips are quite distinctive. They seem a little bit cakier than your usual corn chips, but are no less crunchy. Very lightly salted, they are very extremely yummy. There’s simply not enough of them.

My potato taco, with its hard shell and topped with sour cream, a semi-bitter salsa verde and crisp chopped cabbage, looks like it’ll be a nightmare to eat.

It is not.

In fact, it holds together really, really well. The shell remains crunchy throughout yet does not shatter in the time-honoured taco fashion.

The potato filling is beaut and the whole thing is ace.

The fish taco comes in a soft shell. The same bits and pieces accompany, along with some creamy mayo.

This is simply incredible!

The fish – rockling I am told – is firm, juicy and flavoursome. The batter is not crisp, yet is just right, too, holding to the fish until the last delicious mouthful.

This could be the best taco I’ve ever eaten.

But I’m still hungry.

Look, I know a feed of top-class fish and chips will cost about the same these days, but in that case you’ll almost always get a ton of chips to fill you up – as opposed to the paltry handful of corn chips I receive from the Taco Truck.

And given that customers have to make do without tables and chairs, it’s a little alarming knowing that with a decent head of appetite up I could eat TWO of the combo deals – and that would push the price of a meal out to $24 and somewhat beyond the limits of cheap eats, or at least those of fast food.

Next time, we’ll make sure we take a bottle of water, to avoid the soft-drink trap, and order the combo with an extra taco for $6.

That’d be $18 for a light meal.

Still, there’s no doubting the quality of the tacos this mob is turning out.

Taco Truck on Urbanspoon

Community Chef

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43-47 Drake Boulevard, Altona. Phone: 9368 5900

I’ve been so looking forward to laying eyes on the Community Chef building.

Especially since reading glowing praise by the The Age’s architecture commentator.

As it turns out, the location near the intersection of Kororoit Creek Rd and the train line to Geelong means I’ve been passing nearby on a weekly basis for a couple of years.

I’m a little underwhelmed. It looks, to my stupendously untutored eye, not much different to the other buildings and enterprises with which it shares its Altona industrial estate.

Which only goes to show, of course, that if I can claim expertise in anything, architecture is NOT one of them.

The welcome I receive, happily, is a whole lot more warm and generous than I perceive the premises to be.

Community Chef customer relations manager Trish Love seems genuinely happy to spend as much time showing me around as required, making me lunch and answering my seemingly endless list of questions, some of which I suspect strike her as a little whacky.

Community Chef is the newish whizz-bang multi-jurisdictional outfit that is taking Melbourne “meals on wheels” into a new century.

It is collectively owned by 20 councils, with its tucker finding grateful customers from the Surf Coast to Dandenong.

Locally, that includes the councils of Hobson’s Bay, Brimbank and Moonee Ponds, but not our own Maribyrnong, which has chosen to use another provider.

Having already emailed an earlier list of questions to Trish and checked out the Community Chef website, I am well prepared to have preconceived notions dispensed with.

Mental images of steaming hot meals issuing forth from the Community Chef kitchens and being dispatched with cheerful haste to customers are way, way off base.

But first, lunch … following the hopeful hunch that I’d be presented with an opportunity to sample the Community Chef fare, I have avoided a noon meal, and Trish is happy to oblige.

After adjourning to the staff canteen, she quickly whips my meal into shape.

Knowing what passes for our usual criteria while out on the fang are of little or no use in this kind of setting, I try to sup with an open mind. As I expect, though, the food is a lot less salty and seasoned than is the Consider The Sauce norm, though Trish tells me there are curry dishes in the line-up with an element of oomph.

The pumpkin and red lentil soup is the big winner. Tasty!

The osso bucco with polenta is none too shabby, either.

The Community Chef statistics are staggering.

It prepares up to 2.2 millions portions annually.

It employs 72 staff in total, with 61 staff in production roles and 11 in administrative roles.

Community Chef offers six menu choices per day – Anglo-Australian, international, Asian, vegetarian, roast or a salad or sandwich.

Within its broader parameters, Community Chef is able to cater with flexibility for a wide variety of nutritional requirements.

For those customers with specific needs such as halal, kosher and gluten-free, Community Chef provides supplier contacts.

“The majority of meals are also offered in four texture modified versions – soft, cut, minced and moist or pureed,” says Trish. “These are particularly important for older adults with swallowing difficulties or who have other medical needs. We also have a special needs kitchen where a specialised meal, able to meet complex medical requirements, can be made for meal recipients.”

Unlike other such providers, Community Chef’s meals are pasteurised, meaning they have a shelf life of up to 30 days.

Community Chef’s two trucks deliver the meals to individual councils, who in turn deliver them to their clients.

More than ever, our experience in bringing Consider The sauce to the world has convinced us that food rituals are about far more than food on plate or in bowl.

I express concern that Community Chef seems forever at arm’s length from the very people who eat its food.

I am vastly reassured when Trish tells me that councils regularly bring their clients through for “the tour”, tastings and feedback sessions. (Feedback – ho ho!)

“Some councils even seem to make a point of bringing their toughest customers,” says Trish with a grin.

As well, in due course, Community Chef hopes to cater to community interest by offering the same sort of tour that I am privileged to be enjoying.

The building and systems – the work of Williams Boag Architects, with French food-processing systems architect Francois Tesniere – put a premium on health safety and environmental concerns.

Ewater is used, the ceiling in the massive food preparation area is low to save energy and interior lighting responds through sensors to outside weather conditions.

Having been warned that for safety and hygiene reasons, access by visitors such as I to the food preparation area is very restricted, I’ve been bracing myself for the merest glimpse.
Happily, the “viewing corridor” provides a good idea of the whole process, from arrival of supplies through to the giant pasteurisers (which also serve as cookers for the vegetables) and crating for delivery to client councils.
However, the contrast with small family-run eateries we love to frequent – and in which the cooking, and its fragrant scents, are routinely a big part of the fun – could not be greater.
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My warmest thanks to Trish Love for spending so much time satisfying my curiosity and interest!