The new food truck park that’s opening next week at the site of a former Belfast event center will feature four operations serving gourmet hot dogs, charcuterie boards, rolled wontons and ice cream.
Cheeky Food Truck Park, which is opening at the site of the former Wentworth Event Center after it was destroyed in a fire two years ago, will have its grand opening on June 11.
The opening comes as food trucks have become more common across Maine over the past decade and other communities have also set up parks and events where several of them can gather at once.
The Belfast park, whose name is meant to capture a spirit of fun and colorful energy, will be able to host a rotating group of up to five trucks throughout the summer, at a site along Route 1 that overlooks Penobscot Bay.
The opening event will feature two Belfast outfits: the Moody Dog, which serves gourmet hot dogs smothered in extravagant toppings, and Big Daddy’s Hotbox, which offers classic street-style food in a crispy wonton shell.
The other participants in the opening event will come from slightly farther away. Downtown Charcuterie, which also has a storefront in Brewer, offers customizable charcuterie boxes with sweet and savory options that can include meats, cheeses, pickles, olives, jam, honey and dipping sauces. Downtown Charcuterie will also be returning to the park for several future days throughout the month of June, according to the park’s website.
“I don’t think we’ve ever done an event [in Belfast],” Downtown Charcuterie co-founder Ashley Cunningham said. “And we love Belfast, so I’m hoping that it’ll be a good turnout and that it’ll be kind of like a new clientele for us and a new group of people.”
The fourth participant in the opening event will be Nate and Ollie’s Rolled Ice Cream of Unity, which will also be returning to the park throughout the summer.
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Entering its third season, the ice cream establishment is run by husband-and-wife duo Ashley and Evan McSwain, who named the business after their 11- and 12-year-old children. The kids introduced the innovative rolled ice cream technique to their parents with a YouTube video, later sparking the family’s growing business.
Their menu now includes a rotating selection of flavors, including staples such as “Monkey Business,” which mixes bananas, Nutella and walnuts, and “Cookie Monster,” which features both Chips Ahoy and Oreos. Solid ingredients are chopped and blended together, smoothed and flattened, and carefully rolled up into five or six rolls to be served in a cup with consistency similar to soft serve.
“Older people find it very fascinating, and younger [customers] enjoy it, as well. It’s a fun process, because we have our trays visible so they can watch the whole process while it’s being created,” Evan McSwain said.
The new food truck park will be open several days of each week in June. A schedule of which food trucks will be there is available online. Among the others that are now scheduled to set up there are Portable Pie Place of Searsport, Crepe Elizabeth and Wicked Smahht Chourico Caht of Windham, which offers Portuguese-style comfort food.
The owner of the park, Kristine Wentworth, also hopes to rebuild on the space of the former event center, potentially adding a craft cocktail bar once the food truck hub is established.
