Mei Mei Street Kitchen is the latest in a group of food trucks that have decided to venture off the streets to expand to brick and mortar.
Mei Mei will open its doors as a restaurant for the first time at its new Audubon Circle location near Boston University’s South Campus in two to three weeks, according to the owners. The Chinese-American cuisine is sustainable and locally sourced, and until recently has been served exclusively from food trucks in the Boston area.
Mei Mei Street Kitchen was founded in April of 2012 by Margaret, Andrew and Irene Li. The three siblings combined entrepreneurship, culture and a passion for good food to operate their successful Boston food truck.
The expansion of the business from the truck to the restaurant was inspired by a variety of reasons.
“We wanted to be able to serve more complex, interesting dishes. While you can also be really creative working on a food truck, you are also limited by price points,” said one of the founders and owners, Margaret Li.
Li also said that the winter made serving from the mobile kitchen challenging. The snow was hard on the truck, and large storms presented sizable obstacles. “We were shut down for a week during Nemo,” Li added.
The new restaurant received some of its funding through Kickstarter to help fund the installation of environmentally friendly features at the new restaurant location, including low flow, high efficiency flush toilets and reclaimed wood floors.
“The Kickstarter allowed us to put in a lot of sustainable improvements that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford,” said Li.
Other food trucks are following similar paths, making the recent transition from exclusively mobile to brick and mortar. Pennypackers Food Truck announced the official opening of their new storefront in Somerville yesterday on their Facebook page. More details about the store are yet to be released.
At Mei Mei, with the new location comes new additions to the menu, including chicken and possibly some local water sea food. Making the transition from food truck to restaurant means that messier (yet equally as delectable) dishes can be served.
Margaret is most excited to introduce a chicken dish that Mei Mei served at a pop-up restaurant at The Gallows restaurant in the South End earlier this year.
“It’s a Kung Pow chicken with lots of cheese and Kung Pow chicken strips, and it’s so delicious but very messy so it’s hard to eat from the truck. I’m excited to serve this at the restaurant, where you can sit down at a real table and eat it.”
