The unofficial Food Truck and Trailer Week continues, this time with Brenda and Pat Barnhart's The Bomb Fried Pies & Fried Guacamole. The husband and wife team own and operate a trailer from which they offer fried hand pies in several flavors, among them cherry and apricot, and, of course, deep-fried guacamole.
The trailer is a 1965 Mary-Kay pink Shasta towed by a red 1960 Ford Thunderbird. The outfit's logo is painted on a real, unarmed bomb. A silk-screened collage composed of black and white childhood snapshots, the owners among them, line the trailer's window. The color scheme and typography exude mid-century cool, something more Austin then Dallas. But isn't that the point? Austin has long had the lead in gourmet mobile food vendors. Now that the fever has taken hold of Dallas, it's natural that entrepreneurs see the Capital of Lone Star Cool as a touchstone.
This must involve freshly made food. "I make my dough from scratch. I cook down the fruit, and I fry up the pies and guacamole in the trailer," said Brenda Barnhardt, a full-time dental assistant with a sweet tooth. "I got strange looks when I purchased 100 avocados at the store the other day," she says in a sweet Texas twang. The avocados are used to make the fried treat, which was created on a whim. "I just wanted to see what would happen when I dropped guacamole into a fryer," she says, noting that the apricot pie, finished off with some sprinkled powdered sugar, is her favorite item.
She said the business is a dream come true for her and her classic-car fanatic husband. They hope to be one of the original mobile food vendors in the re-imagined Dallas West Mobile Home-RV Park trailer park on West Commerce Street. "It's up in the air, but I'm hoping we'll be set up by the end of May/beginning of June." To top it off, Barnhardt has entered the State Fair of Texas' fried-food competition and is eagerly waiting to learn if her fried pies and fried guacamole are finalists.
This weekend, the Bomb Fried Pies will be serving fare at The Real Texas Festival in Mesquite. On May 22-23, the Barnharts will park their trailer at the Wildflower Arts Festival in Richardson.
The Barnhardts won't be leaving the festival circuit once the Oak Cliff trailer park opens or if she gets at Big Tex nod. They recently purchased a second trailer, now being renovated.
The trucks and trailers roll on.
