Charles H.
Yelp
One approaches a food truck--any food truck--with a set of prejudices as fixed and grounded as a bishop's mitre. Chief among them: that one will be served something vaguely warm, vaguely greasy, and entirely forgettable, before being sent off to digest both the food and the disappointment in some unspeakably foul portable lavatory. And yet, in the otherwise sleepy precincts of Bryson City, Tennessee--where culinary ambition might be assumed as rare as a decent martini--The Rice Wagon manages to commit the most subversive act imaginable: it exceeds expectation.
Let us begin with the Hawaiian chicken, which, if we are to be precise, is not the usual sticky-sweet cliché so often lobbed at the taste buds by lazy chefs and sugar-addled franchises. No, this is a preparation of cunning restraint and controlled fire--perfectly spiced, mind you, not overwhelmed. It strikes that rare balance between the exotic and the intelligible, like a well-reasoned foreign policy.
And then comes the sticky rice--glorious in its excess, loyal in its texture, a veritable homage to cohesion. This rice sticks, yes, but not in the way politicians stick to failed policies or bureaucrats to their pensions. It sticks with purpose, with gravitas. It is, if you will forgive me, a rice with character.
Now--and this is where the whole endeavor verges on the implausible--the restrooms. One enters, expecting the grim aftermath of some festival of neglect, only to be confronted with cleanliness so startling, so deliberate, that one is tempted to applaud. Not merely clean, but reverently so. As if the proprietors understand that even the most unglamorous corner of public life need not be an affront to decency.
It is, in short, a small miracle: a modest truck producing food of integrity, flavor, and even--dare I say--joy. In a nation drowning in mediocrity, where everything from governance to gastronomy is subject to the creeping rot of focus-grouped consensus, The Rice Wagon is a minor act of rebellion. And like all good rebellions, it is best enjoyed with a fork in hand and expectations, gloriously, upended.
