Hey DC food truck fans. I try to be impartial, neutral and as friendly as possible when writing about DC food trucks. Up until now, that was an easy task because every food truck owner I’ve met has been passionate about their cuisine, service and customers. But, I am just not a huge fan of this truck. Let me explain..
- The truck does not have any online presence AT ALL. No Twitter id, Facebook page, website or email address. They do not announce their locations or even care to interact with their potential fans.
- The truck is completely devoid of any permanent identifying info. Just recently, they began taping a couple pieces of printer paper to their truck containing a generic clip-art logo of an Italian chef and The House Of Falafel scrolled underneath it.
- The one time I stopped by their truck (late lunch service), I witnessed incredibly long wait times for customers to receive their food. I’m talking about 15+ minutes of waiting after they had already paid. One customer started to argue with the operator about how she couldn’t wait any longer. Maybe they were just having a bad day?
- They have 1.5-stars on Yelp.
Now, could they be working out the kinks of a relatively new operation? Quite possibly so. And, I would be happy to update this post at a later time if that becomes obvious. But, for now, I am only posting this information because I’ve received a couple of requests for me to post info about The House of Falafel.
And since they refuse to Tweet their locations, I can’t even put them on the daily map or on the sidebar list. But, here are pictures of the truck and its menu.
UPDATE: Anna Spiegel at the Washingtonian followed-up with the House Of Falafel in this piece.
That’s a fair stance and well put. I’m a huge fan of the street food revolution and such a creative and diverse community should police itself. You want to be a food truck in DC? Step it up!
Tried the falafel a lunch companion was having. Pretty good, though he did wait about 10 mins for it. Its a relatively simple thing to make isnt it? If I was pressed for time, Id skip them.
Well, to be fair, Yelp isn’t all that reliable, and they have but two reviews and one of them is from someone who “has never had falafel that they enjoyed.”
That said, I’m going to go with F these guys. The point of the mobile vendor approach is that you tell people where you are, throw open your window and await the masses. Not having a twitter feed or at the very least, a semi-permanent spot/area is pretty much a sure fire way to have a quit exit from the industry. I’m certainly not going to wonder the streets looking for them when I won’t have the faintest idea when they are coming.
I think you’re making the assumption that they’re aware of an online community about food trucks and are actively rejecting it. It seems more likely that the owners maybe aren’t tech savvy or simply aren’t aware of the online component in DC (fair to say, food trucks have been around far longer than twitter). This is just lost business because of a lack of knowledge, not some holy war against the cabal of starving DC masses.
yeah, I tried that truck for the first and last time last week. Myself and three other people waited almost 45 minutes (post-payment) for simple veggie platters, and after all that, the falafel was like a hockey puck!
First off, love the site thank you for running it.
I agree with Andrew. There were food trucks (and not just hot dog carts) for years before this craze started. There will be trucks after this craze ends. If someone doesn’t want to get involved in the online aspect, that’s no reason to fault them. They are probably missing out on business but that’s their problem. You also listed some legit reasons to not like them but as you said, this is the only truck you’ve singled out – why? If you want to review the food trucks, review them, but don’t single out one crappy one and use the fact that they won’t tweet or decorate their truck with a fun name and cool graphics as a reason to deride them.
For the record, that Chef in the Logo could be Middle Eastern 🙂
Andrew Z & Mike: I agree that there are and will be some more trucks that don’t want to participate in the online world. That’s fine and that was only 1 component to my write-up.
I also really felt compelled to single out this truck because this is the first time I felt like the general public is being taken advantage of. I think we’ve gotten into a habit of assuming that every new DC food truck is really great and that now we need to be a little more careful and evaluate trucks before making a purchase.
Andrew G: I never knew Middle Eastern chefs to wear neckerchiefs and make the “OK” hand sign, but I’m no expert! 🙂
I was really curious after this post, and went to interview the House of Falafel Truck owner to find out what’s going on. Interview here on Washingtonian.com: http://bit.ly/nR0yng
Thanks for stopping by to post your review, Anna!
So, here’s the skinny on this “New” truck. I saw this truck at Farragut a couple weeks ago and to my surprise the operator looked very familiar. Why? I’ve had a few conversations with him. I work at GW and he was a long time vending cart operator (selling the same food, but way less patrons) on H street NW between 21st and 22nd streets. Funny thing is, every conversation we had together was about the food trucks that were “stealing his business” and how “illegal” food trucks were. He even went as far as posting the food truck law on his cart trying to deter people from buying from the trucks. He actually called the police on the Tasty Kabobs truck a few times.
I haven’t seen him on campus since Juneish, now I see why. He is a classic case of if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
I wouldn’t look for him on twitter/book anytime soon, he still has the vendor cart mentality…
Phill: Very interesting – thanks for the info!
It’s a free country. If HoF dosn’t want to Tweet or Yelp or Friend, they don’t have to. It might help their business if they did, but for now that doesn’t seem to be what interests them. All this hoopla is a nothing burger.
I had a beef shawarma and my buddy had the chicken shawarma. I consider most food trucks to be serving above average fair but our shawarmas from this truck were barely average. The Sausca shawarma beats this one hands down.
grabbed a falafel from this truck by Farragut North a couple weeks back. service was quick (granted, it was tail end of lunch hour) and my food was quite solid
nothing amazing, but I definitely gave a thumbs up to my co-workers about the truck that afternoon