There. I said it.

Food trucks are as supposed to be as much a part of LA culture as hot dog stands are for New York. Well, New York wins this one. My experience with food trucks is that they: 1. are slow, 2. serve tiny portions, and 3. aren’t any better than a walk-in eatery. Also, lately, they 4. are expensive, and 5. have incredibly long lines because every hipster thinks they’re the greatest food in LA.

I suspect a lot of the older food trucks that serve the neighborhoods actually are very good. Certainly they filled an important niche, since they served food in places and at hours that people otherwise couldn’t get food. They were operated by people who were from the areas they served, had native knowledge of great ethnic foods, and rapport with their customers.

But now that food trunks have become trendy, the experience has become diluted with mediocrity. I’m not saying that trendiness, by itself, leads to medocrity. But in this case the thing that became trendy was a bad way to serve food. Food trucks have tiny inefficient kitchens. They aren’t designed to serve a lot of people quickly, and they aren’t designed to serve a wide variety, but that’s exactly what people are trying to use them for.

For now, people are impressed enough by the “experience” to not notice they’ve stood in line for twenty minutes to get a small portion of food that’s not very good at a high price. If the food was actually good or unique, as with the old neighborhood food trucks of yore, maybe it’d be worth it, but these days most aren’t. So how long will this trend really last?