By Dylan Hochstedler

Like our staff at Thirst Colorado, you might find it convenient to grab a beer at the neighborhood brewery rather than driving around town. When local breweries make the decision not to serve food and to focus solely on making fine craft beer, it creates opportunity for food trucks to park their mobile kitchens out front and share their tasty bites with brewery-goers.

We have put together a list of seven of our favorite food trucks (no particular order). If we’ve missed your favorite, feel free to drop their name in the comment box below.

Rolling Dough Pizza

Rolling Dough is a truck that specializes in pizza and has been open since August 2014. It’s based in Golden and they make both traditional and specialty pizzas. The truck regularly visits breweries such as Cannonball Creek, New Terrain, Golden City Brewery, Mountain Toad and Joyride Brewing.

Owners Tim Benhoff and Joseph Friedman spent many years working in the restaurant industry before meeting while working in a restaurant in the city of Golden and discovering that they wanted to start a food truck together.

Benhoff points out that his favorite item on the menu is the Bobatillo, a pizza named after his brother Bob, who helped design the recipe. It features a tomatillo sauce base with IPA-braised pork, red onion, queso fresca and cilantro.

Rolling Dough takes pride in their high-quality, made-from-scratch pizzas that are baked with as many local ingredients as possible. “We were recently voted top five for Denver’s A-List, and we have won best food truck in Golden two years in a row,” Benhoff said.

Pile High Burgers

Make sure and grab a few extra napkins because you’ll need them if you plan on devouring a burger from Pile High Burgers. This food truck is based in Westminster and although it often prowls the northwest side of Denver, you can sometimes find it in areas like Parker and Littleton.

The menu is separated into three different classifications: Classic Burgers, Adventurous Burgers and Regionally Inspired Burgers. The Classics are burgers like the Chili Burger, Shroom & Swiss or a BBQ Burger.

Adventurous choices include a Grilled Cheese Burger, which boasts two melted grilled cheese sandwiches for buns, and Breakfast of Champions, a breakfast inspired burger that features cream cheese, bacon, a fried egg and hash browns on a brioche bun.

For the Regionally Inspired Burgers, you’ll find burgers such as a Mediterranean Burger, Cajun Burger and the 3-0-3, a burger which includes pepper jack cheese, bacon, green chilies and pork green chili and topped with a jalapeno cheddar bun.

“We regularly hear from our customers that our burgers are the best they’ve ever had,” said James Genotte, owner and operator of Pile High Burgers. He also pointed out that his truck has been included in the Denver A-Lists top-10 food trucks, and he plans to participate in the Denver Burger Battle next year.

Mile High Cajun

Preston Yoke has been surrounded by food his whole life. His dad opened the first Egg & I franchise in Denver, where he worked from age 14-18. There, he worked all front-of-house positions until he left for Gunnison, where he got a job cooking at a steakhouse.

“While I was at the steakhouse, I realized I knew nothing about cooking so I moved back to Denver and applied for the ACF (American Culinary Federation) apprentice program,” said Yoke. “The apprenticeship is a program where you have to acquire 6,000 work hours and 600 classroom hours. After I completed the program I got my Certified Chef certificate from the U.S. Department of Labor.”

After obtaining his chef certificate, Yoke bounced around a handful of restaurants before realizing he wanted to open a food truck and obtaining the capital to do so.

“Our menu is four different proteins: beef, chicken, pork belly and shrimp done three different ways in a taco, po-boy or grit bowl,” Yoke says. “We also do southern style sides like fried pickles or hush puppies.”

If you’re looking for a real treat, catch Mile High Cajun on an afternoon or evening when Mile High caters a crawfish boil at your favorite brewery or distillery.

“We sell a certain amount of tickets according to what the venue can hold. If the brewery has 60 seats, we only sell 60 tickets for that timeslot,” said Yoke. “We space each time slot by two hours so people don’t feel rushed and can enjoy themselves until the next wave of people comes.”

Yoke says he brings 20 percent more crawfish than what were ticketed for, and there hasn’t been a time when he hasn’t completely sold out. He also noted that they only do boils when crawfish are available fresh and in season, so the next one won't be until around Mardi Gras 2018.

The Pasty Republic

The Pasty Republic has a restaurant on West 41st and Tennyson Street and two food trucks that can regularly be found at Denver breweries.

Pasties are baked pastries, stuffed with a variety of different meats and veggies. They were originally a delicacy from Britain in the 13th century and they became popular with the working class of Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries because of their ease to carry and eat.

Pasty Republic owner Matt Cherry has put his own twist on the historical baked good, including unique breakfast pasties and other special pasties such as The Joey, a Cornish pasty that includes meatballs, mozzarella, marinara, garlic and crushed red pepper.

All pasties are prepped at the Tennyson Street restaurant daily, or they sell frozen pasties for customers to take home and bake in their own oven. With two trucks, they reach twice as many breweries. Their October calendar includes Denver Beer Co., STEM Ciders, Goldspot Brewing, Little Machine Beer and more.

Mac ‘N Noodles

The concept for a macaroni and cheese food truck started when owner David Sevcik visited a restaurant that had four different kinds of mac ‘n cheese on the menu.

“About a week after visiting this restaurant I thought, ‘Chipotle made the burrito into a restaurant, McDonald’s made the hamburger into a restaurant, Mad Greens made the salad a concept, why couldn’t someone make a concept around mac ‘n cheese,” said Sevcik.

He began exploring the option and eventually opened Mac ‘N Noodles food truck in May 2016, with the truck’s first stop being Prost Brewing in Denver.

“The hardest part about opening a truck is admitting I didn’t know everything. I was naïve to think I would work less than 90 hours a week … naïve in just about every facet. Coming from no restaurant experience it truly has been a blessing and a curse. Had I known then what I know now, Mac ‘N Noodles probably never would have started,” he said.

We’re pleased that Sevcik stuck it out. Now we can all enjoy deluxe macaroni dishes - including his personal favorite, Barbecue Pulled Pork Mac ‘N Cheese, or the Mac ‘N Cheese Bites. The truck also does specialty dishes now and then.

While visiting the truck at Zuni St. Brewing, we had the pleasure of tasting Baja Chicken Mac, a specialty dish that truck operator Joseph Wead concocted. “We already had the ingredients and I wanted to mix things up,” Wead said. “We do this about once a week. We’ll also buy special ingredients for things like Pesto Chicken Mac or Philly Cheesesteak Mac,” he said.

Mac ‘N Noodles recently launched their online store where you can purchase socks, shirts, tanks and more with gooey macaroni printed all over them.

Kush’s Food Truck

When Ben Kush’s mom took a teaching job at Discovery High School just south of Colorado Springs in the small municipality of Security-Widefield, she had no idea it would be the inspiration behind her son’s future business.

“This school was for the ‘undesired poor’ students of the other two local high schools. My mom fell in love with teaching there and still teaches there today, 21 years in,” said Kush. “Shortly after she started, she noticed that these students never had any food for lunch and was determined to help where she could. So, early in the mornings she would make several sandwiches to hand out to the students for lunch,” he explained.

It wasn’t long before he was right next to his mother every morning, helping her make sandwiches for the hungry students.

Kush worked a variety of different food industry jobs before switching industries and working for Apple.

“This was an amazing experience and I was totally bought in, that is, until Steve died and the company changed,” he said. “I stayed with them for as long as the weight on my soul would allow before making the determination to leave the company and start a food truck. I liquidated everything, car, house, 401k, stocks and even borrowed money to get my new dream off the ground. The goal was simple, carry forward the actions started by my mom into Denver food deserts.”

Kush opened his food truck in September 2016, and in November of the same year, he created the first Foodtrucksgiving. With more than 12 trucks in support, Foodtrucksgiving served more than 150 veterans and homeless and donated an additional 200 meals to local shelters around Denver.

In February, Kush changed the theme of his food truck from a southwest Asian-inspired menu to “mile high munchies.” The new concept contains a “recreational” menu, which includes munchies, burgers and dogs, and a “medical” menu, which contains salads, turkey burgers, fruit cups and other healthy options.

Pambasos

According to Lisa Carr, co-owner of Pambasos, a Pambaso is a specialty torta from Mexico City. The torta bread is dipped in red enchilada sauce and grilled. They’re filled with chorizo and potatoes and topped with lettuce, sour cream and queso fresco.

“The Pambaso is the most authentic Mexican recipe on our menu,” Carr said.

Backed by chef Gus Mandujano, the truck turns out all kinds of Mexican dishes and even produces gluten free menu options for their gluten intolerant friends at Holidaily Brewing Company.

“As a Golden native I never knew what real Mexican food was until I met Gus,” said Carr. “Street tacos, tortas, enchiladas with potato, chilaquiles, chicken mole and a Pambaso. These foods were something I had never heard of.”

Since the truck is based out of Golden, they try to stay close to home when possible. You can catch them at places like Bruz Beers, Odyssey Beerwerks and Holidaily Brewing Co.

“Pambasos is also a bakery,” says Carr. “Whenever we have key lime pie for sale we usually sell out really quick. We even have had people seek us out for Gus’s key lime pie, mostly in midtown at Bruz.”

- When not sipping a beer and sampling food truck offerings, Dylan Hochstedler is busy at Metro State University, finishing up his marketing degree.