Jonathan, posing with his food truck empire
When Jonathan Coffman took over command of the Eatbox food truck and moved it to Jackson, Tennessee, nothing could have fully prepared him for the Sisyphean effort it would take to feed twenty thousand hungry Bonnaroovians at the Food Truck Oasis. First of all, festival organizers threw him a bit of a curve ball by asking him to fill the gourmet meatball niche at the festival, when he was more used to serving kebabs and burritos at much smaller events around Jackson. Undaunted, Coffman built a trailer filled with chest freezers. He rallied a small army of friends and family to staff the truck. He rolled thousands upon thousands of meatballs. And then he allowed me, a food truck novice, to wander into the middle of all of it, just because I asked.
My previous experiences in food service are dark-night-of-the-soul kind of material; I was truly one of the worst waitresses to ever spill a drink or drop a dessert at the Big Boy and TGIFridays of Mansfield, Ohio, and my tips usually reflected it. But Bonnaroo is all about new experiences, and I thought that working behind the scenes of one of the food trucks, preparing the food itself, might help to erase the memories of those old disasters.
Elbow room in a food truck is limited, but even so, there are a number of people working behind the scene at any given moment to get your food to you. I by-passed the grill and assembly positions (though, bless their sweet Southern hospitality, I think the Eatbox workers were prepared to let me do whatever I wanted in there) and apprenticed myself to Maria (non-Bonnaroo job: fourth grade teacher; favorite summer hobby: teasing Zeke, who was working next to her) at the topping station, where I figured I would do the least damage. Jonathan had devised a color-coding system for which of the toppings went on which of the six dishes they were serving at the festival, though (bless his sweet Southern optimism) I found it a little baffling. Also, finely chopped parsley looks an awful lot like finely chopped cilantro.
My toppings guru, Maria
Even so, I managed to muddle through without, I believe, ruining anyone’s food, and the rollicking good cheer of my co-workers, most of whom had known each other for many years, made it all feel a little like a high school reunion that just happened to be held in a very small space. When Jason came to the window to order one of the veggie options on offer, Maria happily harangued him until he came back to share some of it with me. And I’m glad he did, because it was really, really tasty. The flavors in the marinara sauce were subtle and fresh-tasting; you could tell that they had waited to prepare it onsite. And the toppings, I’m happy to report, were competently applied.
Though I’ll probably never have to make such a choice, I’d gladly take preparing food in the Eatbox over waitressing at Big Boy, a thousand times over. Even so, I was not blind to the fact that my Eatbox comrades were putting in some grueling hours over the course of the weekend. When I kidded them that if they did too good of a job, they were going to be recruited to come back again next year, Maria (bless her sweet Southern tact) flashed me a brilliantly white smile.
“I truly consider this a once in a lifetime experience,” she said.