At long last it seems that Saskatoon has a solid street food community in the form of food trucks — and it was on full display Sept. 13 at the YXE Street Food Festival at the River Landing.

Saskatoon has certainly taken up on the food truck trend much later than other major cities, but that doesn’t mean that it’s lagging behind when it comes to the diversity of the food that’s offered. The reason for the late entrance to the game is because the City of Saskatoon only allowed food truck permits to be issued as of summer 2013.

The first ever food truck in Saskatoon was Disco Dogs. Boasting itself as “Saskatoon’s Favourite Food Truck,” it certainly was popular among the crowd at the YXE Food Fest.

“It’s different,” a festival goer said. “I like that they use naan bread instead of just regular hot dog buns and the flavours are all interesting! I’m having the ‘Low Rider.’ It’s like a hot dog taco in a bun.”

I had a chance to try out the “Texas Shocker,” which has a Texas-style barbeque sauce and crunchy peanut butter as it’s main condiments. It was certainly a different flavour profile than I was used to. With the barbeque sauce adding a sweet-and-spicy taste to the crunchy peanut butter texture, it was almost as if I was eating something between pad thai and baby back ribs — in hot dog form of course. I’m not sure if I’d personally order it again, but Disco Dogs certainly has enough varieties of interesting looking hot dogs to keep me coming back.

Another very popular food truck at the festival was Ace Burger, brought to you by the lovely folks at the Congress Beer House. Clearly they are doing something right with their burgers, as the line-up clearance time was about half an hour. The Cajun chicken burger was well worth the wait, however. The chicken was generously spiced and the Dijon mustard and sweet relish added a nice contrasting kick to it.

My companion for the day, Cody Schumacher, had the Ace Style burger with bacon and arugula.

It was “probably one of the best burgers I’ve ever had,” Schumacher said. If that isn’t an endorsement to run around to find the Ace truck, I don’t know what is.

Which leads to another question: How exactly do people find these food trucks zipping around the city?

The creators of Snack Map think they have the answer. Created by Simon Fanner and Evan Taylor of Nova-Tek Innovation, Snack Map is a sleek little app for your iPhone or Android that lets you see the current location of the food truck of your choosing.

“One day we were discussing where to go for lunch and we wished there was an app to look up what food trucks were near us,” Taylor said. “And then we thought, ‘Why don’t we make something like that?’”

“It was pretty easy for us to build,” added Fanner. “We had all the parts [for the GPS tracking boxes] just sitting in a drawer and the experience to make it from our jobs. So we brought it up to Nova-Tek and they supported our idea for the app.”

Fanner and Taylor brought the GPS idea to the different food trucks around the city and there was universal agreement to bring their system on-board.

“It was pretty easy to convince them to use our technology,” Taylor said. “It was a streamlined way for customers to track all the trucks instead of looking at various Facebooks and Twitters to find outdated information.”

For an app and gadget that was built in under three weeks, it is surprisingly functional and free of bugs. I easily downloaded it and find whether my favourite food truck was active or not and where it was headed — no logins, no Facebook integration, no fuss. Currently Snack Map is expanding into Regina to get all of the city’s food trucks on their map.

Bringing all of these trucks together was the work of two very dedicated people — Patrick Wood and Chad Reynolds. Founders of the YXE Food Truck Fest, Wood and Reynolds have been anticipating the food truck takeover. With experience in event planning in Wood’s case and marketing in Reynolds’, this seemed like the perfect team to put together Saskatoon’s first food truck festival.

“When the trucks slowly started popping up last year we had a hunch that a lot of people would be entering the business this year and that it would be possible to have something like it,” Reynolds said. “We started planning it — actually putting pen to paper — probably around early spring, while still doing our day jobs.”

The trucks “were all excited to be a part of it,” added Wood. “They’re all their own personalities… We asked the trucks to be a part of it around July and everyone was very keen. Most people were really easy to work with and very helpful.”

The goal of the festival was to nurture the burgeoning Saskatoon street food community and give them the support they need to make great grub. YXE Street Food Fest’s role was to take care of the marketing, paperwork and event planning, while the food trucks themselves just show up and concentrate on making delicious food — a genius niche to fill.

“We’ve always wanted to start a business together,” Reynolds said. “And this is something [Woods and I] could do on the side while still maintaining our jobs.”

The entertainment line up was also something that was not skimped on. With local artists such as The Steadies, Parab Poet & The Hip Hop Hippies, Apollo Cruz and of course DJ Charlie Hustle, the fair goers were certainly entertained while enjoying their burgers and brews — when they weren’t waiting in line, that is.

Unfortunately as is the worry for most large events happening for the first time, YXE Street Food Fest needs to go through some growing pains. While the food was good, the line-ups were long — not something you want when a mob of hungry people are waiting outside of your food truck. It took me about half an hour just to get a burger and other attendees were experiencing similar wait times at the other trucks. There were quite a few trucks that ran out of certain staple menu items halfway through the afternoon, which is not ideal. Without a prior event like this though, it’s hard to gauge turnout, demand and runtime.

“We’re gearing up for 2015 already,” Wood said. “Hopefully it’ll be bigger and better.”

“Also, we apologize for the wait times,” added Reynolds. “Here’s hoping that the music [was] keeping everyone entertained!”