Food trucks and pop-up restaurants are two trends that have dramatically changed the food preparation and consumption landscape

around the world over the past few decades, but in the prior 10 years or so, in particular.

Food trucks in their relatively modern incarnation have an ancestor in the Texas Chuck Wagon,

a cattle ranching mainstay that was essentially a typical

covered wagon, one of many in a wagon train, that was adjusted slightly to serve as the

caravan's pantry, the kitchen, the butcher shop, and the central gathering space, for those

working on the range. Settlers and cattle drivers and loggers and other frontier dwellers

would travel alongside these chuckwagons because it was a centralized source of food.

And generally, the food was a combination of beans, salted and preserved jerky-like meats,

coffee, and corn and sourdough biscuits, anything that had a lot of calories

and that would travel well before refrigeration was a thing. Horses were eventually phased out

in favor of motorized vehicles, and the wood and iron wagons evolved alongside the prevailing

technologies of the day into something that looked a bit

more like a piece of artillery than a vehicle. 19th and early 20th century Germans actually called

their version of this upgraded field kitchen, the Guloshk-canonan, or Gulash canon, because it

looked so much like one of their cannon, termed upright, the chimney on the cooking cart, serving as the cannon barrel.

The so-called mobile canteen evolved from this general concept and became popularized in part because of the British tradition of a tea break,

which served as a bit of a morale booster

during World War II, when British mobile canteens gave Allied soldiers a place to congregate,

to sip a bit of caffeine and eat a snack, and to chat with their fellow servicemen.

The mobile canteen was usually quite a bit like the German goulash canon in nature,

something that looked a bit more like a street vendor's hot dog cart than a chuck wagon,

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