The notion of food trucks is something that never really took off in Thailand because it wasn't really necessary. All the spots that you can imagine might have "street food" already do have it. It is just assembled in quite a complicated procedure over the course of hours rather than just pulling a truck up to the curb.
I've never understood why some people are just allowed to take over a street and sell their wares and as far as I know it is a bit of politics such as not being in front of some other restaurant and also a bit of a "permit" that is given to you buy paying off the police. Make no mistake, all of these street vendors are parked illegally, they have just worked something out with the coppers so that they don't get told to move along.
Food trucks have one advantage over street stalls that are assembled from some nearby garage and wheeled down the road. All of the gear including all the cooking apparatus are already contained inside the vehicle. You also have the added bonus of water and cooling and this is something that the street vendors do not have access to for the most part.
A friend of mine recently partnered up with some investors to start on of Chiang Mai's first food truck operations. It is a burger truck that is called "Smash Daddy's."
Burgers aren't exactly difficult to come by in Chiang Mai but burgers with an edge are difficult to come by. I don't know how many McDonalds and Burger King's that we have here, but it's a lot of them. They are about as popular as you might expect. We also have "craft burger" places where your burger it too tall to eat and comes on a cheese board because they saw someone on the internet that does that and therefore they do the same thing. These craft burger places charge a premium for this, and I don't often think that it is worth it.
Smash Daddy's is something kind of in the middle. They have skipped being pretentious like the craft burger joints, but they also aren't really trying to compete with McDonalds, which is good because that is a battle that almost no one wins.
all the prices are in Thai Baht 35 Baht is approximately $1
All of that sounds incredible to me and I particularly like the reference to the Wil Ferrell movie "Old School" with "my boy blue."
They've only just opened but are already seeing a great deal of interest. I think that many people come to it because it is something a bit different without the pretention that exists in the fancier burger places. It is also a small operation and a lot of people enjoy helping out the little guys if they can.
Now here is something that might break people's hearts a little bit. The food truck can't actually be driven anywhere :) Look at the first image. The driving area of the truck has been replaced by an ordering area. They were more so going for the look rather than attempting to drive it up to events anywhere and this is possibly because of the fact that the street food warriors that have been a big part of that centuries old industry wouldn't really like it if modern trucks started pulling up on their turf.
There location is stationary and if you are in the downtown area when visiting here it is really easy to access. It is just across the street from one of the most popular tourist attractions in the entire city so I am sure you can find it. here's a link to the address if you want to give them a try!