Kitchen Cars
Fresh meals, on wheels
At lunchtime in Tokyo’s office districts, office workers flock to colorful food trucks parked in courtyards and side streets for convenient, fresh-cooked meals. In Japan, these mobile kitchens are called “kitchen cars.”
As early as the late eighteenth century, temporary food stalls called yatai appeared on the streets of old Edo (Tokyo) selling “fast food” like sushi, tempura and soba noodles. During the post-war period, yatai sold inexpensive but filling foods such as ramen and yakitori, before making way for engine-powered mobile-food vehicles. In the nineties, food trucks sold light snack foods in recreation areas and special venues. By the early 2000s, kitchen cars with more sophisticated cooking equipment hit the streets offering menus diverse enough to draw office lunch crowds, especially those with no taste for crowded restaurants or pre-made lunch boxes.
It was the pandemic, however, that helped trigger Japan’s current gourmet kitchen car boom. Thanks to a new wave of creative, entrepreneurial chefs, today’s trucks offer a mouth-watering variety of reasonably priced cuisines, from Japanese to international to fusion. Foodies can opt for kitchen car BBQ, tacos, kebabs, Thai and Hawaiian foods, and more. While local classics like curry and rice bowls remain popular, truck chefs post their unique concepts on social media, alongside appealing imagery and menus that involve novel recipes plus healthy ingredients.
Japan’s kitchen cars are small, thanks to constricted parking, and the fact that such elaborate foods are being made in such tiny kitchens seems almost impossible. Yet truck chefs rely on innovative technology to create authentic food comparable to brick-and-mortar restaurants: one can savor pizza baked in an imported Italian stone oven, or naan made in an authentic tandoor. This mobile-dining trend is making inroads with enthusiastic suburban gastronomes and beyond, as some municipalities are capitalizing on flexible mobility by offering kitchen car rentals for local marketing or regional produce events. Other localities have found the cars to be crucial in the aftermath of natural disasters, making fresh hot food for evacuees.
The “kitchen car effect” on Japan’s food and restaurant scene cannot be overstated. Famous chefs are holding kitchen car pop-up events; food companies are positioning branded kitchen cars as mobile marketing venues, touring Japan with free tasting events; and talented young chefs are pursuing their dreams with low overheads in a tiny kitchen car.
