It’s 1 a.m. on a Saturday. The bar scene is winding down for the night in downtown Moscow and hordes of drunk college students are wandering back onto the streets. What do they want?
Gourmet macaroni.
Nathan Romans | Rawr
Hungry late-night patrons stand outside the Grub Wandering Kitchen Saturday night. The menu includes gourmet macaroni and cheese and BBQ. Grub truck can be found most nights between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. on Main St., usually outside The Garden.
The Grub truck is hard to miss. Owner John Fletcher said he designed it that way — the truck is big, orange, emblazoned with a Neanderthal and can be found most nights between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. on Main St., usually outside The Garden.
It’s become a staple of the Moscow late night life since it first appeared on the streets last September, and in the year since, business has only expanded steadily, according to Fletcher. In fact, he said, Homecoming Weekend was the busiest weekend they’ve had so far.
Grub offers a wide-ranging menu, from curry to barbecue to tacos, but the staple, Fletcher said, is the macaroni. Grub’s six variations include mac and cheese with pesto, hot sauce, truffle oil and more.
“Originally, my idea was to do the Mac Truck, and just do 10 types of mac and cheese,” Fletcher said. “It took me so long to build the truck, though, I got bored with that idea, and came up with the Grub idea. I wanted to do more eclectic stuff that wouldn’t limit myself — especially since the truck is much smaller than the average food truck, with limited kitchen space inside.”
For Fletcher, a Washington State University alumnus who graduated with a degree in English Literature, the truck is a pleasant change of pace. He said he fell into the food business in college and stayed because he enjoyed the easy money and fast-paced, creative environment.
In 2009, Fletcher opened Picabu Bistro in Spokane with his sister, which was featured on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives the year after Fletcher left. He said co-owning a successful business was a great experience — however, his second enterprise, an upscale barbecue joint called Lazybones, didn’t go quite so well.
“After your first big success of that first restaurant, you get a little cocky,” Fletcher said. “Blind, thinking you’re impervious to mistakes, you get over-confident or something. I was spending too much money, I was in a really expensive space, there wasn’t a lot of good parking — which people told me — but, you know, you think you’ve got everything figured out.”
Fletcher said he saw the writing on the wall before Lazybones closed. That was when he started looking online for trucks for sale. He said the idea of a truck appealed to him because they weren’t only more laid-back than a sit-down restaurant, but much cheaper.
In the meantime Fletcher was brought back to the Palouse when an old co-worker and friend offered him work at South Fork in Pullman, where he worked as the bar manager for four years. At that point, working on the truck he’d bought was a hobby.
Nathan Romans | Rawr Hungry late-night patrons stand outside the Grub Wandering Kitchen Saturday night. The menu includes gourmet macaroni and cheese and BBQ. Grub truck can be found most nights between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. on Main St., usually outside The Garden.
“I enjoy the complex problem solving, like the actual building of the truck,” Fletcher said. “I learned a lot from metal work to plumbing, and I really enjoyed setting up the system, where I went from being a flustered nightmare to becoming operational and figuring out how to work fairly smoothly, which was really satisfying.”
Many hours of labor and several failed macaroni recipes later, Grub was open for business Friday and Saturday nights. They’ve since expanded to work Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights as well, and Fletcher said he hopes to open for lunches and dinners eventually, as well. He wants to start rotating specials on the menu and developing new recipes.
While Fletcher hopes there will be other enterprises in his future, and not necessarily in the food industry, he does consider Grub to be a long-term project.
“I like food, but my role in the food industry is owning something, and being fully in control of the creative aspect,” Fletcher said. “It’s a lot of fun. Everyone is really happy, and we just have a really wonderful audience.”
Hannah Shirley can be reached at [email protected].