Last year’s Food Truck Festival in downtown Virginia attracted plenty of hungry visitors. Submitted photos.

VIRGINIA — Got a hankering for a taco? A giant cookie? Kettle corn? A gourmet grilled cheese? A foot-long eggroll? An American porketta burger? You’ll find all of that and much more during the fourth annual ReVive Virginia Food Truck Festival on Saturday, September 17 from 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. along Chestnut Street in Virginia.

It’s back to “normal” for the festival after a few years of pandemic-related changes, said Shawn Herhusky, of the ReVive Virginia initiative. ReVive Virginia is working to bring energy and improvements to the downtown Virginia business district, and parking two dozen or so food trucks along Chestnut Street is a great way to attract throngs of visitors to downtown, Herhusky said. “The food truck scene on the Range is great,” Herhusky said. “This event generates a lot of customers in the downtown area.”

The event will have an even more festival-like atmosphere this year, with the addition of several live music sets in front of the Lyric Center for the Arts, along with face painting and art activities for the kids. At the other end of Chestnut Street, adults can set down their French fries from Later Tater and pick up an axe to try axe throwing at the new Forge Social Haus. Toss in a few games of bingo at the Virginia Elks Club starting at 1 p.m., and you have a full day of events for the entire family.

The masked chef at Go Figur’s Food Experience serves savory victuals across the Iron Range, including this year’s Food Truck Festival.

Many festivals and events were cancelled during the last few years due to COVID, Herhusky said, meaning that food truck owners had to scramble to find business. As word has spread about the Virginia Food Truck Festival, new food truck vendors have joined the lineup, Herhusky said. Aunt Edmoes Cookies, featuring cookie dough on a stick and deep-fried brownies, and Superior Cubans from Superior, Wis. are two of the new vendors this year.

Also new is the Celebrate Aurora food truck, which will be taking its first-ever trip outside the city of Aurora, said Lindsey Luke.

Luke works with the Celebrate Aurora non-profit, which raises funds to support the Patriotic Days and Pumpkin Festival events in Aurora. The group refurbished a trailer donated by the Aurora Lions Club into a burger-based food truck, Luke said. They feature American-style burgers and brats with a variety of different cheeses, including their popular porketta burger.

And there will be plenty of local favorites and familiar faces at the event as well, Herhusky said. The bright blue Go Figur’s food truck, which can often be seen around town, will be parked along Chestnut Street.

It can be a challenge to produce a variety of good-quality food in the limited space of a food truck. During a recent event in Virginia, Go Figur’s co-owner and chef Alex Haugen moved efficiently around the inside of his trailer. It was hot inside the 14-foot trailer, thanks to heat thrown off from the deep fryer and stovetop. Haugen took an order for South Americans over South American yucca fries, and dropped some frozen yucca fries into the sizzling oil and stirred a pot of warming South Americans, the beloved ground meat-and-vegetable mixture. He was sharing the space with friend Jarrod Green, who was taking orders and handling payment at the food truck window.

There have been up to four people at a time working in the Go Figur food truck, Haugen said, though he limits employees to his wife and “really, really good friends,” he said. “People you can apologize to” after working frantically in tight quarters.

“He’s pretty good at apologizing,” Green confirmed.

Every possible work surface inside the food truck is utilized, often for more than one purpose. The top of all the freezers and refrigerators are used as countertops, for example. Larger food prep projects, such as creating that bubbling pot of South Americans, are completed in the Iron Range Makerspace commercial kitchen in Hibbing.

Like many food truck owners, Haugen hauls the Go Figur’s trailer to festivals around the region. For many events, food truck owners have to submit their menus in advance, to avoid the possibility of having “eight hamburger vendors at one show,” Haugen said. But the fun part about a food truck event like the ReVive festival, he said, “is that you can do whatever you want.” He loves the creativity of developing and serving interesting and delicious food.

When the yucca fries were crisped just right, Haugen drained them, popped them in a basket, and smothered them with a scoop of South Americans. Then came a drizzle of homemade roasted garlic and dill sour cream, and, to finish, a sprinkle of chopped endive. Green passed it through the food truck window, and Haugen moved on to the next order.

Janna Goerdt lives and runs a farm near Embarrass. When she isn’t working on the farm, mothering her twin boys, or writing, she likes to prowl the new non-fiction shelf at the Virginia Public Library. She can be reached at janna@htfnews.us.

Vendors participating in this year’s Food Truck Festival include:

• K&B Grilled Cheese

• Jue’s Chinese Restaurant & Lounge

• Mel’s Sportspage Bar & Snickers Pizza

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