BECKLEY, W.Va. (AP) - Hardy, hardworking Mountaineers value freedom so much that lawmakers have appropriated state residents’ liberation, in Latin, as the state motto.
Not as official, but just as widely stereotyped, is the West Virginian’s love of family, good food and trucks.
Chef Joel Sullivan was born in Louisiana, but he’s staying true to his transplanted West Virginia roots with Poncho & Lefty’s - his mobile food business that rolls family, food, big trucks and the open road into one successful business venture.
Sullivan serves up fresh fish, chicken and portobello tacos Tuesday through Friday in Beckley, he said. He uses social media to let customers know where they can find him, if he’s not parked at his usual spot on Prince Street.
Business has taken off since he first opened his lunch wagon last year, he reported.
Formerly a gourmet chef in a nationally ranked Pittsburgh restaurant, Sullivan, 29, started Poncho & Lefty’s when he was “expecting” his first child.
“When I figured out I was going to be a dad, I knew I couldn’t work until 2 in the morning anymore, couldn’t put in 60-hour weeks,” he said. “I started to think about what I could do.”
Knowing a newborn would receive a wide welcome from the Sullivan family in Beckley, he and his girlfriend headed to the City with a Mine of Its Own, where family rallied to help him open his own business.
“My family is very essential in getting it all started,” he reported. “People started liking it, and it started getting quite a following.”
Collectively, Americans have loved the “food truck” since the 1930s, according to Smithsonian magazine reports, when the motorized food carts began popping up in Los Angeles neighborhoods.
Now, fleets offering tacos, curry dishes, taiyaki and gyros are the birthrights of diners in most American cities. From the West to the East coast, chefs are also serving up hybrid creations like the Korean taco - Los Angeles-based cuisine that criss-crosses Mexican and Asian culture into an exclusively American offering - from the windows of “lunch wagons.”
Beckley’s own Poncho & Lefty’s truck is on a journey of its own, with Sullivan behind the wheel. Sullivan serves up his tacos with fresh, homemade pico de gallo and Carolina cole slaw to Beckleyans.
It’s hard to say when the plan for Poncho & Lefty’s started. Sullivan grew up in the South, where a plentiful number of las taquerias trucks peddled tacos roadside. Later, Sullivan’s own father sold slow-roasted peanuts from an antique peanut stand during Beckley festivals.
As a younger man, working in Alaska, Sullivan drove a lonely section of Interstate A-4 between Denali and Fairbanks. Food trucks selling Thai and Chinese food, halibut tacos and higher-end coffee dotted that ribbon of road that cut through “the middle of nowhere” in the shadow of Mount McKinley - a culinary aide-memoir of the sunny South in the heart of the Alaskan taiga.
“There would just be taco stands, in the middle of nowhere,” he recalled. “I mean nowhere-nowhere.”
Sullivan’s experience as a chef started in the early 2000s in Pittsburgh, where he spent 10 years working 60 hours a week in high-end restaurants, finishing his shifts at 2 a.m.
He said the higher echelon of the restaurant industry can be vicious. Restaurants compete to lure good chefs but can’t fully compensate them for their contributions to the success of the restaurant.
During a decade of working in Pittsburgh, Sullivan took a job as a chef at a nationally ranked restaurant. The stress of turning out 100 five-star plates a day eventually took its toll on any joy in his day-to-day life. Isolated in the kitchen, away from the diners who were paying top dollar for his culinary expertise, the corporate coldness of the restaurant industry began to squelch Sullivan’s heart for his work.
“You’re buried back in the kitchen,” he said. “You can make 99 good plates all day, but that one bad one can ruin your day. It was way too intense.
“I’m glad I did it, but it was time to leave.”
In 2013, when Sullivan learned he was going to be a father, the stress of the gourmet food industry and the financial challenge of managing on a chef’s salary and schedule became more problematic.
The idea of operating a food truck had been tucked into his subconscious for years. Now, it beckoned.
“It was an old idea,” he said, adding, “I needed something where I could work during the day and get a better cash return.
“The whole concept of just toting it around, being a chef … I’d just seen it work, and it was time to start doing something on my own.”
Sullivan’s mentor and former boss, Pennsylvania restaurateur Gene Mangrum of Steel Plate Hospitality Group, had once given him a piece of advice that Sullivan felt it was time to heed, he said.
“He’s a good person to work for, which is really hard to find in the restaurant industry,” said Sullivan. “One of the things he taught me was, ’You’ll never get rich working for ’the man.’’”
With Mangrum’s professional advice and with his family in Beckley rallying around him with financial help and other forms of support, Sullivan headed back to West Virginia to strike out on his own.
Sullivan said he knew he wanted to serve fresh foods, so he purchased a truck that offers plumbing and a deep-fry station.
“I could’ve put a microwave in here and served junk food,” he said. “That’s not what I wanted to do.
“This is good food. It’s street food, but … I use fresh ingredients every day - no mayo, no cheese. I use a little sour cream.”
Taking a decorating cue from Mexican taqueria trucks and from Mangrum, who had operated a string of highly successful Mexican restaurants in Pittsburgh, Sullivan had the local Kid in the Background creative team decorate his lunch wagon with an eye-catching, Latin-flavored mural of “fun-looking skeletons.”
“In this industry, imitation is the highest form of flattery,” he said. “I’m not really selling Mexican food, but I needed something that would grab your eye.”
From Tuesday to Friday, Sullivan said, he parks his distinctive truck in front of Kid in the Background on Prince Street, opens the window and waits for customers. On weekends, he takes Poncho & Lefty’s to Charleston’s East End Bazaar.
One perk of his new business is that he’s no longer “buried in the kitchen” but that he gets to work as a chef and to be in touch with the local residents who drop by Prince Street for one of his plates.
“I’m constantly surprised,” he said. “You hear compliments. People give you good feedback and come just on reference.”
Sullivan said he also feels good about the fresh lunch choices he’s offering at Poncho & Lefty’s, from his pico de gallo and Carolina cole slaw to the hand-battered cod, chicken and portobello mushrooms he serves in the tacos.
“I’ll go to Kroger’s or a farmer’s market or a festival to get vegetables,” he said, adding, “I have my own beer batter. I bread them up right in front of you and drop them in the deep fryer.
“There’s nothing fabricated about it,” Sullivan promised. “You’re paying for a guy to cook fresh food in a clean machine. It’s quality, fresh food.”
Sullivan is the father of 20-month-old Elizabeth and 2-month-old Audrey.
Keep up with Poncho and Lefty’s route via Facebook (www.facebook.com/ponchoandleftys) and follow on Twitter @ponchoandleftys.
___
Information from: The Register-Herald, https://www.register-herald.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.