Deep fried pickles, chicken fingers and lobster rolls are never meant to be charbroiled.
That should not be a concern for White Goose Bistro executive chef Ryan Cyre when he’s cooking up tasty treats from the menu of his downtown restaurant to Prince George events in his new food trailer.
The fire suppression system he has aimed at the fryers and grills in case of a sudden uncontrolled flare-up is skookum enough to douse even the most stubborn grease-fed inferno.
Cyre and his dad Rick, the White Goose Bistro owners, have invested $80,000 in their food-truck venture and they’ve turned a 1977 Airstream trailer they bought three years ago for $16,000 from a private owner in Beaverly into a sleek, polished aluminum restaurant on wheels.
“It was babied, we were lucky that way,” said Ryan Cyre.
The air-conditioned trailer will keep chefs cool as they work close to cooking heat sources and it has a large cooler to store food items that have been prepped hours earlier at the restaurant to be sold that same day.
Cyre has had the trailer mechanically inspected and it met the approval of fire inspectors. Knowing how striking the vintage polished aluminum trailer now looks after a shop in Edmonton spent 250 man-hours buffing the exterior, he’s hoping to have it ready for the Cruisin’ Classics Show and Shine on Father’s Day this Sunday at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.
“This vehicle needs to be in the Show and Shine,” he said. “It turns heads.”
He’ll soon have decals put on it with the restaurant’s geese logo.
Cyre estimates there are eight or 10 other food trucks in the city. Although they’ve been around for decades in other cities, food truck service is relatively new to Prince George. Now that the pandemic is waning and health restrictions have been lifted, more are expected to pop up as more restaurants will bring their food specialties to events that draw large crowds, such as the Summerfest, Show and Shine and the Canada Day festivities at the park.
“We’ll be around, we’re going try to do a day or two (each week) at the park and a day or two at Wood Innovation Square and we’ll find put what works for us,” said Ryan Cyre. “My restaurant only seats 48 people at one time, but in the food truck I can serve 300 people in 40 minutes.
“We’re lucky, we have a restaurant so all my prep is done in restaurant where I have more staff, more space, more heating utensils. It’s earlier. We can load up more, do more options for food, my menu can be bigger because I can prep my stuff (at the restaurant). We’ll let the town kind of help us figure out the menu, we’ll see what works.”
