Courtesy of Grace Meat + Three
A new food truck is available for hire in St. Louis, a side project from Rick and Elisa Lewis, who own and operate the Grace Meat + Three juggernaut in The Grove. Rick Lewis refers to the 25-foot, 2016 Izuzu diesel truck as "the Grace Chicken and Fish food tank.”
Courtesy of FOX2
The truck debuted last week on FOX 2’s Tim’s Travels, with Tim Ezell. “I’m swerving it all over St. Louis,” Lewis joked regarding the rolling fried chicken wagon. “We’re comin’ in hot.
“We saw a deal and jumped on it,” he adds. “It was already equipped with a full kitchen, an 8-foot exhaust hood, and as many fryers as we have at Grace.”
Lewis bought the truck to relieve the pressure of cooking for large public and catering events. “A lot of what had to be done in house can now be handled on a self-contained vehicle,” he says. “Now we can more easily handle the public events we’ve done before, like Grove Fest, Grace City Wide Fair, Grub and Groove, and larger events, like corporate outings or providing late-night wedding food."
Courtesy of Grace Chicken + Fish
The truck was branded Grace Chicken + Fish to be more reflective of the limited menu and different items offered at the original late-night walk-up window, alongside Grace Meat + Three, which means “tenders, catfish, fries, crispy fried shrimp, sandwiches, and a rotating menu of sides,” Lewis told Ezell. “And a hand pie—there’s gotta be something sweet.” (The window has since morphed into an order-and-pick up point “all day, every day” for the Grace’s Meat + Three menu.)
Courtesy of Grace Chicken + Fish
Lewis at the launch of Grace Chicken + Fish in 2019
Lewis tells SLM that going mobile means being “lean and mean, more systematized and more efficient than before—and being able to pump out some serious volume when we have to." The truck has a holding oven, so Lewis can work out of that while cooking fresh product on board. The result: "Ordering and pick up becomes a fast process.”
Looking to the future, Lewis says, “Grace Meat + Three will always be the flagship location, but the brand that is more replicable and applicable to today’s climate may be the Chicken + Fish model."
The Chicken + Fish truck can be booked through the restaurant's catering page. The social media handle on Facebook and Instagram is @gracechicknfish.
