Pizza Truck Wars @ NYC Food Film Festival

As part of the 4th annual NYC Food Film Festival, dozens of food trucks were assembled under the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday morning. The Food Truck Drive-In was dubbed New York's largest gathering of food trucks ever. And it wouldn't be a true assembly of food trucks without pizza.

This was the first time that New York City's three most popular mobile pizza places -- Jiannetto's, Pizza Moto, and Eddie's Pizza Truck -- have served pies in the same location (although Eddie's is brand new, so that would make sense). The problem? Patrons were not going for pizza. There were so many other food trucks there and people were taking advantage of bites that might not normally be accessible to them. For example, Jersey City's Krave Truck often had the longest lines of the day.

Jiannatto's was positioned between the Wafels & Dinges truck and the Go Burger truck. Unlike most vendors, Jiannetto's was not offering any specials. At $2.75/slice, it's not surprising people were staying away. I don't think I saw a single person place an order with them during the hour I was there.

Just two trucks - The Krave Truck and the Green Truck separated Jianetto's from Pizza Moto, which is my favorite mobile pizza place, not to mention one of my favorite pizza places in the city. Even Pizza Moto was not churning out many pies, despite the fact that they lowered their prices to compete with deals at other trucks.

A personal Margherita pie was only $7.00, with the Salvatore (ricotta, mozzarella, garlic & chili) coming in at $8.00 and the Fun-Guy (smoked mozzarella, fresh mushrooms) coming in at $9.00.

I opted for the "Taste of PIZZAMOTO" which was a crostino (essentially a little piece of bread) with goat cheese, honey, and hazelnut. It was a complete rip off considering that you could get a whole personal pie for $7.00. It was basically two bites -- delicious, but it should have been larger or cheaper. The photo below makes the crostino look larger that it actually was. In reality, it was about the size of a small granola bar.

Finally, we come to the newest member of the mobile pizza food scene: Eddie's Pizza Truck. There was once again very few people placing orders at the truck, which was offering $2.00 specialty cheese slices and $2.00 sides like zucchini sticks and sweet potato gnocchi (normally $4.00).

If I was going to have eaten pizza, it would have been at Pizza Moto, but with so many other delicious treats available it didn't make sense. Here were some of the best bites on hand:

Kimichidillas
(flour tortilla w/ shredded kimchi and monterery jack cheese)
THE KRAVE TRUCK



Raspberry Basil Popsicle
THE COOKING CHANEL TRUCK



Greenmarket Slider
(mozzarella, tomatoes, and feta salsa verde on a soft slider roll)
MILK TRUCK