Fernando's Taco owner, Fernando Valdes. Photo / Tom Eley
Iconic Hamilton food truck event Gourmet in the Gardens celebrates its 10th season, with food, fun and friends.
Organiser Tania Simpson said she started the event as a way for people to connect in nature, away from their phones.
“I want people to get off social media and let your feet touch the grass,” Simpson said.
“It’s magical to see people celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, or simply enjoying a meal together outdoors.”
The annual event is held, weather permitting, on the Hamilton Gardens’ Rhododendron Lawn, on Sundays from November until March. They only paused the event during the Covid-19 pandemic.
What started on the Hamilton Gardens’ Turtle Lake hillside, with just 14 food stalls under gazebos and a handful of food trucks, has now grown into a roster of 26 food trucks, offering a range of cuisines.
Simpson said choosing food trucks for Gourmet in the Gardens is an art that comes down to a number of things, including great food, quick service, and not running out mid-feed.
“There are many different facets when it comes to talking about food trucks.”
Many small food ventures have launched at Gourmet in the Gardens and gone on to expand, including On a Roll, which started in a gazebo 10 years ago and the owners now run two eateries in Hamilton, Simpson said.
“They [vendors] also have to be very good on their socials.”
Last weekend, Simpson and 16-week-old rescue dog Sailor guided Waikato Herald through the first event of this season.
The pet-friendly event was busy, but less busy than some Sundays in previous years, Simpson said, when there were lines of more than 50 people at some food trucks.
“It certainly shows a need for this type of event in Hamilton.”
Not only in Hamilton, it seems, as the event in Waikato proved so popular that it spawned a spin-off in Tauranga.
The food trucks at Gourmet in the Gardens are often family-run affairs.
One example of this is Sawadee Thai, run by a husband-and-wife team, Doug and Thanya Crawford, part of the event since the start.
Image 1 of 6: The team at ImchefNZ.
“It’s not an easy job. But it helps when you have someone like Thanya watching your back,” Doug said.
“We worked our butt off and now we’re doing about three times as much as when we first started.”
The couple have two food truck locations, Wednesday to Saturday outside Caltex Dinsdale and Sunday at Gourmet in the Gardens.
The Crawfords observed that as Hamilton has grown as a city, so has Gourmet in the Gardens, and they expect it to continue in the future.
“Hamilton’s growing, so this [event] is going to grow with it, simple as that,” Doug said.
Another food truck at Gourmet in the Gardens is Fernando’s Tacos.
Owner-operator Fernando Valdes is originally from Honduras and moved to Mexico, where he lived for eight years.
“I started cooking because my dad, when he studied medicine, was a kitchen man in a Mexican restaurant in Mexico.”
When Valdes moved to New Zealand, he found a gap in the market as local Mexican restaurants lacked “that punch”.
So, he started selling tacos to the community from his home, advertised via social media posts, before “building a business” and buying a food truck.
For Valdes, a good taco is simple.
“It’s about cheese. It’s about flavour. To have a good taco, you need to have meat, coriander, onion and salsa. That’s it.”
Service at the food truck is fast, with Valdes being able to produce 16 tacos in two minutes.
This took “lots of practice and a lot of pushing myself”, he said.
“The most I’ve managed to do was 196 orders in two hours.”
The line-up of vendors is just as diverse as the event attendees: families, friend groups, businesses, clubs and furry friends are amongst the crowd.
“People come for Christmas parties and corporate events. We have groups of mothers. You see line-ups of 10 or 12 women with their babies,” Simpson said.
Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. He previously worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive.