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| - I first got to try the Alley Burger food truck at the Barista competition at Fratello Coffee.
Needless to say, the burger was fantastic. Full of flavour, and completely satisfying.
I also like the look of the truck and there are a lot of options for what you can get.
... maybe TOO many options!
Essentially you have (more or less) 2 choices of burger: their classic "Alley Burger" (a pork patty with cheese curds and a piri piri aioli), or an angus beef burger (1 patty or 2) with a wide range of toppings (some requiring a $1 upgrade per topping), chosen by you!
I really like that you can customize your burger (I opted for a single burger with curds, bacon, piri piri, jalapenos and onions) but I'm not sure that all this variety is ideal for a food truck.
Don't get me wrong, I have full faith in the well-skilled staff running the truck, but I can only imagine that all these customizations may slow the service down a little.
In fact, I ended up waiting probably over 2 hours to get through the long line of burger-hungry gastronomes. Now granted, this was (I think) Alley Burger's first venture out, and this city has been chomping at the bit for some Alley Burger action! So I don't anticipate lines like that in normal situations.
I would think that if there were rotating burger "specialties" on the menu, with pre-selected ingredients, this would make people's choices faster and the "kitchen" more efficient. But what do I know?
The only other suggestion I would have for improvement is to have tax-included, rounded-out prices. My total ended up being $13.06 (luckily I had some coins!), but you could see they were starting to struggle for change.
My recommendation is that instead of a burger being $7.99, then charging tax, list it as $8 on the menu and report it at a cost of $7.62 with tax of $0.38.
The fries, as always, were delicious and it is amazing the amount of poutine you can get for $7 or so. A unique element is that you can also "season" your own fries with a variety of "shakers" alongside the truck: smokey bacon & cheddar, truffled salt & pepper, chipotle bite, etc.
All in all, I am so excited that Alley Burger is going to be regularly hitting the streets. The quality of food did not at all disappoint and I am sure I will be tracking it down quite often.
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