Looking for a Better Country: The Smoking Truck

I don't remember when or where, but months ago I read an article about a burger truck that opened in Paris and was all the rage. (Indeed, if you google "burger truck Paris" all sorts of articles will come up.) I've always said that a brilliant idea of how to make money overseas is to find the one thing expatriates are missing and sell/do that. Be a chiropractor. Open a breakfast-all-day-diner. Sell English books. Whatever. Where expats are, they are missing something, and money is to be found in filling that homesick hole.

An American woman (not me) who had studied culinary arts in Paris decided to open a food truck (except for pizzas--very rare) in Paris that sold burgers.

Parisians don't eat on the street.

Parisians don't eat with their hands.

And when Parisians eat burgers, they do so with a fork and knife. I kid not. I've watched this in horror.

So the idea of a Parisian waiting on the street for their burger that they will have to eat on the go seemed like a bad idea. But Parisians love trendy, and I suppose the burger truck is trendy, because they love the burger truck.

I was hanging out with Busy (who, somehow over the last few years exploded into a full-fledged TEENAGER...where is the girl who dressed up like Belle when I took her to Disney years ago?), and we decided to give the burger truck a try. Since it roams the city, you have to look up ahead of time where it'll be parked, and get there in time to get a burger. Because once they're out of supplies for the day, they're done.

Y'all, I love me a good burger. I was really crossing my fingers on this one.

We arrived a little later than planned, and were a little nervous when we saw the line. The 50-person deep line. All standing in the blazing sun. (Better than the Parisian norm of annoying drizzle...) We got in line and looked at the clock. 1:03pm. How long would we wait?

A couple got in line behind us. Then, a man came out and asked us how many burgers would we order? Two. Same question to the couple behind us. Then, the dreaded words to the guy behind them: "We have enough burgers for everyone in front of you. However, since you only want one, if everyone orders what they said they would, we should be able to accommodate your order. If you want to wait...you won't know until they've all placed their orders."

He decided to wait.

We couldn't believe our luck. Just another minute or two delay on the metro, and we would have missed our chance for today to get one of the trendy burgers. We watched for the next hour as the man in the blue shirt had to tell numerous people that there were no more burgers today.

We waited and waited. Busy got sunburnt. We played with our phones. We discussed America and France and Marseille and Paris and memories. We watched as time and again, the man came back out and delivered the sad news that they were out of burgers for the day. I was grateful that they had this system of counting, because I would have been sad to wait forever only to be told after the wait that they'd just run out. At 2:04pm, they finally took our order. Busy got a classic and me a bbq. The man behind us who'd taken the risk to wait for an unpromised burger was able to place his order. We all waited a little more.