This past Saturday, Boston celebrated its 56th Pride Parade, complete with a festival and block party following a parade with over 300 groups. Pride in Boston captures everything I love most about living in Massachusetts, the passion, the community, and, of course, the food. The festival, which was held in Boston Common and featured queer hip-hop group Flyana Boss as the headliner, had six food trucks offering various delicious bites, and you know I had to try them all, well, almost all. I didn’t make it to Daddy’s Bonetown Burgers or Hometown Poké because of their insanely long lines, but don’t worry, I’ll be back next year.
The four trucks I went to had a variety of amazing options, including the best mac n’ cheese I’ve ever had and a savory crepe that I’m still thinking about. I also talked to a few different Pride-goers about the food they liked most, and what it means to have so many vendors show up to support Pride in a time when it’s needed more than ever. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s talk about the food.
My mission was to eat my way through Pride, and I think I was pretty successful. I looked at the menu of each food truck and decided to divide and conquer. A drink from one, a main dish from one, sides from one, and a dessert from one. For my drink, I decided to get the Woz Passion from Gourmet Kreyòl, a refreshing drink made with lemon juice, Haitian vanilla extract, sugar, water, dragon fruit, and guava. When I got this drink, I was fully expecting it to be super sweet from the guava, but it was extremely refreshing and managed to be guava-forward without being sickeningly sweet.
Because I didn’t get food from Gourmet Kreyòl, I asked some other people at Pride who did what their thoughts were, and I definitely need to try the food from this truck next time I see them. One of the food truck’s customers looked quite happy with her meal so I decided to go straight to the source and ask her what her thoughts were. The customer, Louren, who uses she/her pronouns, got the vegan legume bowl with plantains and found her meal to be very satisfying.
“Loved the vegan options, and it was very well-seasoned,” Louren told me.
Next, I decided to try a savory crepe from The Crepe Shop and I was not disappointed. I chose their pepperoni crepe, and while I’m not usually a pepperoni lover, this crepe has converted me. The slight sweetness from the crepe itself combined with the spicy pepperoni, tangy marinara, and melted cheese was a perfect combination, and if I didn’t have other food trucks to try, I could’ve had five of them. Crepes are also notoriously tricky to pull off, so I applaud The Crepe Shop for doing them on a food truck.
For my side dishes, I went with Lordya Gourmet, home of the best mac n’ cheese in the world and some incredible fried plantains. Fried plantains are one of my favorite foods, and Lordya Gourmet makes them perfectly. They were fried to perfection and made fresh, and they were so good that I’m considering getting over my fear of frying foods to learn how to make these at home. However, the real star was the baked macaroni. I’ve had a lot of mac n’ cheese in my life, in fact, my dad has two different recipes, one stovetop and one baked, that he has mastered over the years, and I constantly make boxed mac n’ cheese fancier by adding extra cheese and bread crumbs, so I consider myself a bit of an expert. And trust me when I say that nothing compares to Lordya Gourmet’s baked macaroni. The sauce was beyond anything I’ve ever had before. It was creamy and smooth, and the cheesiness was immaculate, but it was the seasoning that took the deliciousness over the edge. With mac n’ cheese, you always run the risk of having a bland cheese sauce, and this cheese sauce was richly seasoned by Lordya Gourmet and had the perfect blend of spice without being overwhelming.
Finally, it was time for dessert, so I checked out Clyde’s Cupcakes and got a lemon cake pop. And before you ask why I didn’t get a cupcake from the cupcake place, their tagline is “we do more than cupcakes”. Cake pops are another thing that I love, and lemon is one of my favorite flavors, so I had to give Clyde’s version a try, and it was overall a great bite. Although the cake pop texture itself was a little thicker than I normally like, it was still delicious and was a perfect end to my Pride menu.
In my opinion, food and community go hand-in-hand, and I was curious to see if other Pride-goers felt the same. Seeing groups of people enjoying their food on the grass, I once again threw my social anxiety out of the window and asked Meg, a friendly Pride-goer who I was near, how it felt to see so many food vendors show up for Pride, her response perfectly captured the importance food has in community.
“It’s important to nourish our bodies while we’re out here spreading the love,” Meg said, and honestly, I couldn’t agree more. Pride relies on community to be successful and for the community to be able to safely show up, we need food to fuel our bodies so we can continue fighting the good fight and making the world a safer place for everyone.