With her Thai chicken pizza samples sitting out on the counter, brazenly challenging the dark skies to open up, Morgan Wowchuck’s food truck was the place to be Wednesday afternoon.
The young chef created the truck two years ago with the help of her father, Jerry Wowchuck, after graduating from culinary school. The senior Wowchuck is in the restaurant equipment supply business—he does auctions—and said his daughter’s operation, Marno’s Woodfire Pizza, is based out of Lake Country.
“It’s named after my mother,” he said, noting his daughter’s business is a family affair.
Marno’s works with the most basic convention technology, the woodfire oven has a curved dome under its boxed hood, built from the same principles as ovens 4000 years ago. The food clearly sits well with her customers as Wowchuck had a decent flow of people heading her way despite rain in the surrounding hills and fork-lightening looming on Knox Mountain, just behind the Prospera Place site.
Kelowna’s version of Eat Street operates at Prospera through the summer season, Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., with up to five food trucks on the lot at a time. From Italian to burgers to pickle chips, the trucks offer a wide breadth of choices and managed to draw decent crowds for the kick off, despite the weather.
Attendance peaked at 90 people, according to Prospera Place marketing manager Craig Campbell, who figured a good 300 hungry customers came by over the course of the evening.
Now in its second year, Eat Street routinely brings out everyone from families to foodies and offers a good tourist attraction too. On site at 4:30 p.m., Lorraine and Kaden Swallow, Carmen and Tyler Bird, and Mia, Emmett and Jennifer Sutton were all chowing down on burgers together as the evening’s only patch of rain rolled through.
The vendors quickly set up chairs under Prospera’s overhang until the clouds passed.
