Page 18 - Real Style Holiday 2018

James Cunningham
REAL STYLE CATCHES UP WITH THE COMIC, ACTOR, AUTHOR & HOST OF THE EAT ST. TV SERIES.
Real Style: You spent five seasons as host of the food series Eat St. where you explored North America’s street food industry and also released the cookbook Eat St.: Recipes from the Tastiest, Messiest and Most Irresistible Food Trucks. Do you have any favourite or memorable dishes from your time on the show?
James Cunningham: It was indeed the BEST job ever! OMG so many good dishes and amazing people. This is the burning question I get all the time and it is by far the hardest to answer!
Over five seasons we must have tried almost 1,000 trucks all over North America and every time the crew and I were having an amazing meal we would say: “This is it! It can’t get better then this!” and then we’d go on to the next truck and an even more mind-blowing experience!
We gathered the best recipes and trucks in our book so if you haven’t picked it up, you can do so on Amazon. Some of the trucks are sadly no longer around but their recipes live on and most are super simple so you can make them yourself! So that narrows it down to about 100 trucks and memorable experiences!
18 Real Style Holiday 2018
RS: Have you always been a foodie?
JC: Isn’t everybody really?! I have always loved eating.
I think we have to re-define the term “foodie” because it is being used to describe such a
broad spectrum of people, all of whom I have encountered while being the host of a food show!
I have always been a “foodie” in that I’ve always been a great appreciator of eating. What makes me crazy are people so obsessed with food that they seem to have lost their appreciation for what is simply “good.” For example, one of the best hot dogs I have ever eaten was from a 7-11 in LA. It was a long shoot day and our PA (Production assistant) ran to get two prop hot dogs for a scene. I don’t know how he prepared it exactly or what he did
to this hot dog, but when I bit into it I forgot my lines, it was so good! If I said that to one of my foodie friends though, they’d lose their minds!
We should stop being so obsessed with instagramming our dishes from restaurants and stop putting food on such a high pedestal. I’ve had so many meals with people who were too busy criticizing what was wrong with a dish rather than just simply enjoying it.
I think that was the best part of Eat St.: being able to showcase dishes and ideas because the chefs were passionate and loved it rather than focusing on the fact that it came out of a food truck.
RS: Are there any new culinary trends you are particularly enthusiastic about?
JC: What really excites me is not so much a culinary trend but a culinary movement. It’s the number of food truck operators and owners who have done so well with their food trucks that they opened “bricks and mortar” locations! Not saying that food trucks aren’t “real” restaurants but seeing these folks expand to year-round
PHOTO, JAMES CUNNINGHAM FACEBOOK