Nashville, TN: The Food Truck Festival

Ben: Ahhhh the Nashville Food Truck Festival, what a horrible experience for someone like me. For some reason, the popularity of food trucks has risen in the past few years, but I think it's all hype. I thought the purpose of a food truck was to provide very tasty, unhealthy, and cheap food. Sure, my only experience of food trucks was at state fairs and such (and I guess their prices were kind of high there too, but that's because it's at the fair and to be fair, it's not always fair at the fair.)

However, I do think that this food truck festival just left a bad taste in my mouth, because it was a step into a new world: A world of communism. That's right, communism. Where everything costs the same amount. Everything was five dollars or more. If ice cream was five dollars over there, then ice cream was five dollars over here. Where was the invisible hand to lower the competitors' prices? Not here.

Also, it's important to note that a lot of these "food trucks" were just big corporations who wanted to get into the action of food trucking. These well-known establishments even hiked up their own regular in-store prices to meet the communist standards of nothing under five dollars.

So, here's my advice: Keep on trucking, past the Nashville Food Truck Festival.

Cassidy: This is a prime example of what we like to call a "drama queen." 

Ben: No, I explained this already, queens are for monarchies, and this was a communist regime.

Cassidy: I swear that I don't work for the Coca-Cola company. But hey, COKE, if you need a girl who shamelessly promotes your products in every single picture, I'm your lady. 

Ben: Also, that is a grilled cheese from The Grilled Cheeserie - a very popular food truck in Nashville with over-priced grilled cheeses. I wanted one so bad but I couldn't pull myself to spend five dollars on a single grilled cheese. (Especially when you can go to the grocery store and make your own gourmet grilled cheese for way less. I won't go into details but the trick is low heat, high quality bread, real butter, and a nice thick-cut sharp cheddar cheese.)
Cassidy: But honestly, The Grilled Cheeserie makes a great grilled cheese. I suggest adding chicken to your grilled cheese if it's available.

Ben: So, after pouting for a couple hours, I decided to do some spelunking and I caved in and bought a "sliders" from some random food truck. Before I continue I want to state that this place made excellent "sliders," they were actually pretty delicious. Okay, so that's the last good thing I'm going to say about this food truck festival.

I'm walking around complaining to Cassidy about prices and searching trash cans for my coke rewards bottle caps, when I see a sign on a food truck that says, "SLIDERS $4.00!" Finally, a restaurant that understands what I'm all about. So I ordered the "All American" which is basically just a plain cheeseburger with homemade pickle slices on it. I pay with my card, select the "no tip" option, and wait for my "sliderS". That uppercase "S" was no typo on my part, the only typo present that day was the "s" at the end of "$4.00 sliders", for there was no "s" when I was handed my tray of, count them, one slider! This was like the horse cookie incident all over again, how did I find myself in the position of paying four whole dollars for a single "sliders?" Who would have thought that just "s" would have caused such an in-justice?

(I also bought a bag of chips for a dollar fifty (which I think should be illegal) however, I was able to justify them out to only being fifty cents because I saved a dollar not buying a stupid five dollar grilled cheese. Their drinks were a dollar, but they were non-refillable cans, so I knew I had to continue searching for a better value.)

Cassidy: Ben, being the dramatic never-wanting-to-pay-for-little-cheeseburgers person he is, wanted to throw this little 'burg away. He actually wanted to throw it in the trash because it was one single slider instead of multiple ones. I'm very anti ever throwing away food, so I started to get really, really angry about this. So, I threatened to eat the burger. I was so close to eating the entire burger in one bite so he could not throw the poor thing away. I finally talked him out of it, and I still got to take a bite. It was extremely, extremely good. Tasty as heck. 

Ben: I don't have a problem with paying four dollars for a fancy cheese burger*, but that's when it's a full sized burger, not a dinky little "sliders." This is an artist's rendition of the size of the "$4.00 sliders". Next to the little nugget burger is a Tardigrade. (A.K.A Water Bear. A.K.A Moss Piglet) It is the smallest known animal in the world. The Moss Piglets are also one of the few organisms that can survive the harsh conditions of outer space. They are a pretty extreme species, you should look them up.

Cassidy: I wish there were little tiny cheeseburgers floating all around me. 

Ben: The fun starts here. After being disappointed at the food festival, I knew that we could always fall back on the good ole' farmers' market. 

Cassidy: Instrument-wielding vegetables triumph over everything.

Ben: We got a Mennonite Grown Big Beef right here!
Cassidy: That's my actual name.

Ben: The farmers' market is a wonderful place. I've lived next to it for the past three years, but it took a girlfriend to allow me to step out of my dorm room and explore great places like these that are less than a mile away from where I live.

Cassidy: D'awwwwwwwwwwwwww. 

Ben: Anyways... The Nashville Farmers' Market is one of my favorite spots in Nashville. It has great produce, a delicious food court with a lot of great restaurants (that don't expect you to tip and that don't charge you five whole dollars for a small moss piglet burger), and it's right next to the bicentennial park. I'll go more into my secret love for the farmers' market in another post.

*I actually do have a lot of problems with spending four whole dollars on a single cheese burger no matter what size it is.