Cape Town - In theory, the concept is outlandish. Reckless even.
Set up a bucket of chilled champagne, a scarlet Persian rug, and a golden chandelier decal outside a 1967 American-style school bus and serve truffle-infused designer burgers and Thai crab salad wraps out of it, to people walking by on the street.
That’s the approach of The Good Life, a fresh fusion food truck that’s been serving high-end street food on a Cape Town pavement since 2013.
Though Cape Town’s food truck scene is still evolving – the driveable restaurants only started catching on about four years ago – a steady convoy of trucks with themes from Mexican street fare to greasy diner mainstays now spot the city.
A marketing executive and lifelong culinary enthusiast, 44-year-old Adele Maartens of Plattekloof, hosted intimate cellar dinners for guests at her vacation house on the West Coast before she bought the truck advertised on Gumtree in 2012. It was functioning as a party bus at the time.
After completing renovations and menu-planning, The Good Life’s debut event was an episode of MasterChef South Africa in 2013. While the bus operates daily outside Maartens’s office near the N1 City Mall, it’s main venue is music festivals.
As a self-taught chef, Maartens relished the prospect of owning her own restaurant. As an avid traveller, she had a rolodex of international techniques, from olive-growing in Italy to cheese-making in Holland.
“I suppose food trucking is a man’s world, in a way. But I don’t think the ladies can’t do it.”
Cape Argus