Mobile kitchens are where it's at

Mabel on the Move! (Credit: Kelly Wilkinson / Metromix)

Remember when restaurants stayed in one place? Bah. Mobile kitchens are where it’s at, wherever they wanna be. Two new ones have hit the streets.

Mabel on the Move
This is a love story. About a woman and an Airstream called Mabel, and before that about a woman and vegetables.

Kate McKibben had revamped her family’s diet years before she fell for the Airstream. She loved !the way she felt when she ate more vegetables and fewer additives, dyes and sugar. When she got fluttery over a sweet-looking 1962 Airstream Globetrotter Travel Trailer !in a magazine, she drove to the Catskills to buy the thing. She planned to use it to share the love.

McKibben started Mabel on the Move in March. From her dolled-up mobile kitchen, she serves salads, soups, all-beef hot dogs and fruit-rich desserts, like strawberry-!rhubarb cobbler. The ketchup and mustard toppings are organic. The soups aren’t just rife with vegetable pieces, they often have them 8pureed into the broth. McKibben’s mantra is “organic, local, healthy, made-from-scratch.”

You’ll have reason to feel good about what you’re eating. Prices are lovable, too: $3.50 to $5. (317) 501-0370, mabelonthemove.com.

Byrne’s Grilled Pizza
There’s the truck, the 6-foot grills and the fresh, big-flavored toppings. For good measure, there’s the man-of-God namesake, Father Jim Byrne. But it’s gotta be the dough.

Dot Reinstrom chalks up the success of Byrne’s Grilled Pizza to her made-from-scratch dough. Rolled thin and crisped over flames, it’s a smoky foundation for the pies that she serves with her husband and sons. No strict adherence to circularity here. Freeform edges end in a crust of cracker-thin crunch.

Most-ordered so far? The Byrne’s Special, topped with pesto, artichoke hearts, spinach, tomatoes, ricotta, mozzarella and Asiago. Byrne’s offers vegan options, too, and breadsticks flavored with Flat 12 Bierwerks’ porter. Lunchtime means salads, and all cooking hours show the Reinstrom men tending grills and the chitchat that happens around them.

Byrne’s pizzas are easy to find at Flat 12 (414 N. Dorman St.) Thursday through Sunday, but the Reinstroms are starting to take their grills out on the road.

Get a slice for $3 to $5. Pizzas small and large run $9 to $19. (317) 606-2111, byrnespizza.com.