Nate sends along this photo of Duck’s Comic Kitchen’s snazzy new food truck, “Wonderlicious on Wheels”.

According to a short Patch post yesterday, the truck will spend Monday in the East Decatur parking lot before hitting the road and heading into Atlanta this coming week to appease the food truck-crazed masses.  It will be selling everything from Duck’s donuts to veggie burgers, according to the blurb.

This food truck trend continues to gain steam around Atlanta while Decatur sits at the sidelines, unusually silent in the wake of another coming food/beverage storm.

We may feel like we can wait forever to “figure out” how food trucks fit into the Decatur food chain, but it seems to me like there are many parallels to farmer’s markets here.  Basically, if you don’t plant your stake early and show that you can draw the crowds, before you know it, we’ll be hearing a food truck version of “Well, a lot of the best farmer’s go to Morningside on Saturday morning.”

Will food trucks hurt brick-and-mortar retail business in a small city like ours?  I don’t know the answer to that.  But let’s have an open discussion about it now – restaurant owners, residents, retailers, etc – , so that if we decide, “No, it will most likely complement retail.”, we will have an actual shot of attracting the best food trucks to our city on a daily/weekly basis.

 

OK, obviously you can’t eat ON MARTA (even though you can carry a concealed weapon!), but according to this AJC blog posting, you can still find cheap eats around the MARTA stations.  (What a revelation!)

Case in point…Duck’s Cosmic Kitchen! (pictured above)  Just a quick walk down East College from Avondale station…if you enjoy the rush of passing vehicles.

Humorously, in rattling off the various spots to eat near MARTA stations, the post doesn’t mention Decatur Station or Lindburgh…both which have countless restaurants right outside their entrances.  I guess maybe that’s just too easy.

Thanks to AJC golden child Carl for the link!

If you’re a true foody-Decaturite, you need nothing more than that picture to know which donut I’m referencing. For those still stumped, here’s a final “quack!” to clue you in. Got it? Of course I’m talking about Duck’s Comic Kitchen’s locally famous mouth-watering donut! (insert Homer Simpson drooling noise here)

The famous donut gets the entire cover of AccessAtlanta news mag this week all to itself. And for good reason. It’s the best darn donut in all of Atlanta! (According to none other than me)

The blurb inside gives a few details about just how popular these little .85 cent and $2 marvels of love have become.

The little takeaway shop and dining room tucked into East Decatur Station off College Avenue prides itself on making almost everything from scratch with food from meticulously chosen suppliers. Once a month, Duck’s hosts a four-course Go Local dinner that showcases dishes made from local organic growers, complemented by local beers. But Duck’s may be most famous for its baked doughnuts, selling about 650 of them every week.

Ann Duckworth won’t say a word about the recipe, but customers like to rib her that the main ingredient has to be crack. Originally intended to be muffins, the recipe took many turns in a variety of pans before it grew into the craveable buttery, sugary coffee companion it is today. “We discovered those doughnuts by accident,” she says. “Someone at the shop suggested we put them on the menu, and I said, ‘These won’t sell,’ but they have paid the rent ever since.”

650 a week! I wonder how many of those are sold at Dancing Goats.

My wife’s a little concerned that all of this front page exposure won’t leave any donuts for us Decaturites (she’s still a little annoyed that the Brick Store got so popular…OK…so am I), but I don’t think Ann and all of the Duck’s staff would let that happen with this rent-paying, heaven-sent donut.  Right??  Right!?!