Last Saturday, the Emory College Council (CC) offered its fifth Emory Experience Shuttle of the semester. The destination? The Atlanta Food Truck Park. As opposed to the typical shuttle ride, students boarded the experience shuttle with high spirits and empty bellies, ready to explore a one-of-a-kind Atlanta location. Launched in 2012, the Atlanta Food Truck Park is the first permanent food truck site in Atlanta. It offers the Atlanta community access to more than 30 rotating food trucks with an enormous variety of tasty cuisine, ranging from Mexican soul food to southern inspired gelato.
The discovery of new food, live music, string lights and a cozy fire pit add to the park's ambiance, making the site an ideal spot for a relaxing lunch or dinner with friends. Indeed, after 20 minutes of travel and endless chatter amongst students, the trip to the Atlanta Food Truck Park proved to be an enjoyable experience.
After filing off the shuttle and being greeted by the beautiful arrangement of flowers and the Atlanta Food Truck Park sign, the delicious scents and potential for the discovery of new food lured students inside the park. Seven food trucks, each colorfully and creatively designed, were featured within the park, which offered a variety of food options. The foods and vendors included Filipino tacos, Grubbin' Out serving various sliders ranging from the classic hamburger to crab cakes, Bucket O' Shrimp serving fried shrimp, crab-legs and other seafood, and UrbanTaali featuring fresh, high quality halal meals. For dessert, options included delicious red velvet funnel cakes and fried Oreos. To top it off, A Little Bit of Heaven offered all natural and organic wraps and burger, and Bon Appetit served savory and dessert crepes and sandwiches.
Once inside the park, students quickly lined up behind the food truck of their choice. The wait at each food truck appeared to be fairly short. While eating, students enjoyed listening to the live jazz music and socializing by the fire pit.
College juniors and self-proclaimed "foodies" Charity Gates and Nyssa Zaman said they enjoyed the Atlanta Food Truck Park trip because they were able to sample offerings from the variety of food trucks. Zaman enjoyed her meal and she concluded that Grubbin' Out should be a dining option at Emory.
"I'm gonna have to tell my friends about this," she said.
According to the Emory CC website, the Emory Experience Shuttle is a CC-funded program allowing Emory undergrads to explore Atlanta while providing them with an opportunity to see different places they might not have had the opportunity to go to due to lack of convenient means of transportation.
College freshman Jennifer Becerra shared: "I haven't been out much," so she is thankful for having had the opportunity to leave campus and explore the city.
– By Kelsie Smith, Contributing Writer
