Chi Food Truck Fest (weekly)

About This Event

Chi Food Truck Fest is exactly what it sounds like — the city itself rounding up a rotating lineup of food trucks and parking them in Daley Plaza every Friday from 11 AM to 3 PM, announced week to week via the city's own BACP account rather than a fixed roster. Free to walk through; you just pay per item.

This kind of casual lunchtime food truck rally couldn't have happened in Chicago a decade earlier. Until 2012, city law required food trucks to prepare their food off-site and just reheat or assemble it on the truck — actual onboard cooking was illegal. The City Council finally voted 45-1 to change that, but the fight to get there was real: politically connected restaurant owners, working through an alderman who'd previously run the Illinois Restaurant Association, pushed through restrictions alongside the win, including a rule banning trucks from parking within 200 feet of any restaurant, backed by fines up to $2,000. Truck numbers in the city actually fell by more than 40% in the years right after the ordinance passed, even though cooking onboard had finally become legal.

Worth knowing: this season's run is nearly over — Sept 4, 11, 18, and 25 have already passed, leaving Friday, October 2 as the last date on this year's schedule.