Food trucks are becoming enormously popular in Adelaide. Parked in temporary locations all over the city, the colourful, quirky fleet provides locals and visitors with an interesting array of high quality food and drink, and adds vibrancy to our streets. These mobile food vendors are part of Splash Adelaide, an initiative of the Adelaide City Council that ‘aims to bring our laneways, unused spaces and city streets to life’. The campaign, currently in its second season, is experimenting with a number of exciting urban projects from night markets to pop-up entertainment and performances in public places.

Every month, a collection of the city’s food trucks, vans, bikes and stalls gather for Fork on the Road, a celebration of Adelaide’s growing food truck culture and street food scene. The event offers a great opportunity to sample different cuisines in a festive atmosphere and there’s a wide variety of tastes and experiences.

Yesterday, the trucks converged outside the Adelaide Festival Centre in the heart of the city, a venue that offers a diverse program of performances and exhibitions throughout the year. It also happened to be the preview of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Centre and I met up with Georgi and Ben for lunch before they went to the show.

The air was swirling with wonderful aromas, giving us an appetite as we wandered around the trucks deciding what to choose. A long queue waited patiently for Coorong Angus beef burgers at Burger Theory, one of the most popular food trucks, while next door Raw Thirst was busy keeping up with the demand for beautiful fresh juices.

We stumbled upon Taiwanese chicken nuggets, gourmet Argentinian food at Chimichurri Grill, homemade lemonade, Mexican tacos and German wieners. The giant, steaming pans of paella at Taste of Spain looked so delicious that I couldn’t resist, with a choice of chicken and chorizo, or seafood.

Ben with his pulled pork sandwich

Georgi opted for a vegetable fritter with lemon myrtle, caramelised onion and salad from Conscious Lifestyles, a stall specialising in wild, native and local food, while Ben tucked into a seriously good pulled pork sandwich from the Little Big Cheese Company. The pork shoulder is smoked over a wood fire for 16 hours and topped with King Island smoked cheddar, house made apple cider slaw and BBQ sauce.

There was also a sprinkling of sweet treats. With the crowd growing, we snapped up a brownie from Four Seeds, a chocolate tart and a berry cupcake along with some coffee from Fair Espresso, and drank up the vibrant scene.