Cooking Channel’s “Eat Street” spotlights Hawaii food-truck fusion fare on Oahu

Cooking Channel’s Eat Street, which spotlights innovative curbside eats, will feature Honolulu’s popular Soul Patrol food truck in an episode airing today. Later this month, the show will showcase Opal Thai, a Haleiwa-based eatery on Oahu’s North Shore.

Eat Street’s film crew spent several days on the island during June shooting our growing food-truck fusion fare. Soul Patrol (parked near Beretania and Alakea streets, near downtown Honolulu), fuses Southern and Pacific styles of cooking to serve up “Pacific Soul” eats. Chef Sean Priester (pictured, above) also emphasizes stocking the truck’s kitchen with locally grown and produced ingredients. Among the truck’s top sellers: buttermilk fried chicken, seafood gumbo & grits, crab and feta macaroni & cheese, and the “Sassy BBQ Chicken Plate.”

In the episode slated to air today (3 p.m., Hawaii time; 8 p.m. and midnight, Eastern time; and repeats airing on Dec. 8 and Dec. 10) will start with the Japanese-American Fukuburger truck in Las Vegas, followed by Soul Patrol. The show will then jump to trucks in Orlando, Fla. and Brooklyn, N.Y. For more details about the episode, click here.
 
Opal Thai, which, at the time Eat Street was filming, parked on the edge of Haleiwa with various other food trucks, will serve up Pad Thai, Penang curry and the truck’s popular “Drunken Noodles,” a spicy stir-fried dish made with broad noodles, in an episode set to air Dec. 20 (8 p.m. and midnight, Eastern time.) For more details, click here. Opal Thai, now housed in a shop building, is no longer operating a food truck.

A feature story in the November/December 2011 issue of HAWAII Magazine, “Evolution of the Hawaii Food Truck,” (John Heckathorn) details how Hawaii led the way long before the recent gourmet food-truck craze on the U.S. mainland.