Gourmet Food Carts Come to Cleveland

Recently, Cleveland Public Art, Zygote Press and other partners held an event to celebrate the launch of a new "food cart" program in Cleveland. The idea is to bring healthier alternatives to Cleveland neighborhoods, most notably downtown and University Circle. One of the first of the food vendors in Cleveland (albeit in a truck, not a cart, and not officially in the city's program) are Dim and Den Sum. Stay tuned for more info about the city's new food cart program - and look for expanded food options on the street next time you're about town!

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Q&A: The guys behind Dim and Den Sum

Duo brings first food truck to Cleveland

By Janet Nguyen
Metromix
April 27, 2010

Two long-time friends have reunited to bring a popular food concept on both the East and West Coasts to Cleveland.

Three years ago, Jeremy Esterly, 34, and Chris Hodgson, 24, met while working at Fire Food & Drink in Shaker Square. They became fast friends and stayed in touch even after Hodgson moved to New York City to work at The Spotted Pig. But an idea—now a reality—recently brought Hodgson back home to work with Esterly on this new concept—and when we say new, we mean new to Cleveland.

We're talking food trucks.

What is a food truck? It's exactly that. A truck that serves food. And nothing on the Dim and Den Sum menu is more than $6. The truck is slated to start serving food next month. What kind of food, you ask? Locally-sourced comfort food with an Asian twist to the lunch and late night crowds in and around Cleveland. Where in Cleveland? Well, you'll need to follow them on Twitter and Facebook to find out their exact location on any given day. Just look for the brightly-colored truck with a red, maniacal-looking octopus painted on the side.

When did you two come up with the idea of bringing a food truck to Cleveland?

CH: It was probably about four months ago when we decided to team up. We had ideas about it separately probably half a year ago. When I came back to visit, we talked about it and decided to go with it.

JE: We worked together previously for like six months about three years ago and we hit it off pretty well and had a bunch of ideas then. It was really crazy. We were both talking about it at the same time. It's a good way to start up a restaurant. You get capital from this and work your way up. We were tired of working in a kitchen, tired of putting in long hours for somebody else and we wanted to do something for ourselves.

CH: It was kind of a new territory for both of us and for Cleveland because they don't have any food trucks. We looked into all the codes and everything ... Cleveland's trying to start a food cart program. We've been in contact with the city getting this going. We wrote a business plan, we found a truck and got the truck here to Cleveland. I moved back to Cleveland about three weeks ago. We've just been focusing all on this and doing menu testing and everything like that so that when we open, we can hit the streets with some awesome food.

How did you come up with the name "Dim and Den Sum?"

CH: Jeremy was drunk. [Jeremy laughs in the background]. He called me up and was like, "Dim and Den Sum" and at first, I was like, "I don't know about that." But then, once I started doing research on dim sum, it became a very playful thing for people to say.

JE: I was drinking a lot and I was throwing a bunch of ideas at him. [Looks at Chris]. What else did we have? Flavor Wagon? It was a bunch of stupid, random things and I was drinking heavily and that's what came out of it. The octopus—everything.

How did you come up with the menu?

CH: The menu took a long time. It's in its fourth iteration, fifth iteration. We started just throwing ideas out there and once we actually saw the truck and bought the truck and saw the equipment, we had to tweak it a little bit more. We wanted to stick with the locally-sourced, still going with the best product, but able to get the food out of the kitchen quick enough so people aren't standing around for 10 minutes. We want to run like four to five minutes. We came up with a fun menu that's got a lot of different ideas, an Asian flare to it, but quick enough that people can order and be gone in three to four minutes.

JE: I spent a lot of time in the South with a lot of comfort food, a lot of soul food. So that's what we tried to stick with—things that would make people comfortable. There's a lot of Midwestern comfort foods—tributes to the Polish boy and stuff like that.

CH: I love Asia. It's my favorite continent I've ever been to. Japan, Korea—all those places—I think the way they cook, their techniques, their attention to detail, the different flavor combinations they do ... it has always influenced me and been an awesome part of my cooking.

JE: We're both really into Asian food. Specifically, I think Korean. There's a lot of Korean stuff on the truck like kimchi slaw, and then we make ketchup out of ramp kimchi that we forage. We forage our own ramps. We're making a huge batch of that now, so that's cool.

Is your menu going to change with the seasons?

CH: Absolutely. Whatever we can get that's the freshest and is being produced at that time, we're going to use that to fill our menu up with new creations.

JE: The Dim of the Day is going to change depending on what we can find seasonally. We'd definitely like to feature ramps because I love ramps. And we're featuring them anyway and that's seasonal, and (spring) is such a short season. It's going to change based on what we find at the market. We'll probably do it on Saturdays—go to the farmer's market in Shaker Square and hit up whatever we can find.

When can we expect to see the truck cruising around Cleveland?

CH: May 10 is our official launch date. There is an event we're doing in the Warehouse District on the 7th. Lunchtime on the 7th we'll be in the Warehouse District if people find their way down there. We want to switch off between University Circle and downtown for lunches. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (for lunch) and we want to do late night in Coventry, Ohio City, Tremont and downtown from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. We have iPhone applications coming out, Blackberry applications coming out. We Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook all of our locations and you can also go on our Web site (coming soon) and we'll have a map on there showing our exact location.

Do you think this concept will catch on in Cleveland?

JE: I think it's going to be huge real fast. We're not pioneers, but we're definitely the first to do it here. I think it's going to catch on real quick and hopefully we can partner up with other people in the future too and help them get going. Nobody moves around (in trucks)—we're different with that. Everything we make ourselves ... that's different too.

CH: I think it's going to catch on. If you go downtown or University Circle, you've got thousands and thousands of people right there. If we're offering food that's a lot better than getting a hot dog or something like that at a lower price that's fast, I think it's going to catch on really well.

What are your future plans for Dim and Den Sum?

CH: We hope to have three (trucks) within three months. All three will be different concepts. We're looking at a couple different trucks right now and a couple different ideas that we got. You should see different concepts coming up pretty soon.

JE: Extending the brand and using it and expanding it to do other things. We'd like to do a restaurant at some point. Just basically using this to fund that.