While Americans across the country may be tuning into the Food Network every Sunday at 9pm for ‘The Great Food Truck Race,’ Baltimoreans need not go far to get a bite of the gourmet food truck phenomenon taking over the US.

From Andy Nelson’s Bar-b-que mobile food truck, which began serving hungry crowds twenty years ago to Lil Miss Cupcake, Baltimore is bursting with savory meals on wheels and the Baltimore Brew decided to get in on the munching!

Kooper’s Chowhound Burger Wagon

Every Friday Kooper’s Chowhound Burger Wagon is parked in front of the Rotunda in Hampden serving gourmet burgers and fries. Attracting a variety of customers from grocery-shopping soccer moms to weekly regulars, manager Joe Perkins says the burger wagon has been in operation for a little over a year and has been running strong.

“The burgers are gourmet,” Perkins declared, pointing to the open flames in the kitchen next to which lie an assortment of condiments and toppings ranging from honey mustard to black bean salsa. Perkins noted that despite gourmet food trucks growing in popularity, increasing competition and “higher quality food coming off the carts,” Kooper’s is very successful.

“Business is great! We’ve had a lot of good money days,” he stated. Reasonably priced at $8 a burger, there are also different daily specials, today’s covering the bison and turkey burgers, for a few bucks less. “We go out to different neighborhoods and we make the deals happen,” Perkins explained.

Perkins runs the truck during the days and spends his nights traveling to different stadiums selling beer at baseball and foot ball games. The beer man, chosen for the burger truck due to his traveling-selling experience joked “You’ll see me selling burgers at lunchtime and then at night I’m selling beer at your favorite stadium!”

Though Kooper’s is famous for its burgers (Perkins named the Otis and the MacGuiness as the best selling) the Brew editors highly recommend the sweet potato fries as the chowhound’s true delicacy not to be passed up. Perfectly flavored, achieving a balance between crisp and tender, the sweet potato fries accompany almost every order coming out of the burger wagon.

Drew Parassio who just started working in the truck a week ago gave an employee point of view as to why the chowhound truck is great. “You get the front of the house experience and the back of the house experience. You get to see people’s reactions which you don’t normally get working in a kitchen,” Parassio explained.

Tuesday through Friday the Burger Wagon keeps to a schedule outlined on their website parking for a few hours in a range of spots from the Inner Harbor out to Timonium.

Curbside Café

It’s lunchtime and the smell of pulled pork and chana massala is wafting out of a little red-and-white food truck parked on the street , opposite Baltimore’s Stieff Silver building.

It’s the first day that Lesa Bain has parked her Curbside Café burrito-mobile at this somewhat -odd spot — right by the Boy Scouts of America building at the foot of Keswick Road — but a steady stream of people have found their way here.

Hampden hipsters, office workers from the Stieff Silver building, a truck driver and some student-types from nearby Johns Hopkins have all popped in to try the $6 burritos at this rather new restaurant-on-wheels.

“We originally wanted to start a burrito restaurant,” said Bain, who began the business with spouse Shawn Smith. “But it was a lot to take on so we thought ‘Hmmm, why not do it from a truck?’”

Curbside is the couple’s first foray into the food service business, so preparing to open for business meant some lessons in food handling and learning the rules from the city about where they could set up shop.

“They told us, basically, to stay away from the Inner Harbor and the stadiums, where people have special licenses,” Bain said. They’re hoping their unique and cheap menu will catch on with customers.

Choices include some twists on the standard fast-food burrito: you can get burritos made with fresh avocado, edamame, roasted veggies, chana masala and tofu, as well as chicken and pork. Other little touches tell you you’re not in a suburban Chipotle. There are some sultry South Indian tunes, for instance, courtesy of world music DJ Cheb I Sabah, spinning out of the sound system inside the truck, where Bain’s sister Sunny Jenkins is preparing a pulled pork burrito.

Curbside has done some events this year: the Sowebo Festival and some First Friday evenings in Hampden and they plan to do Hampdenfest.

This is their first week roaming from spot to spot, a different lunchtime venue every day of the week. “Hampden really likes us, people were so friendly and saying ‘Happy to have you here,’” Bain said.

At Harbor East, on Monday, people were pretty much all about getting their food and getting back to work, she said. Harbor East was foot traffic, while the Hampden-ites seemed to attract people who found them the café’s Facebook page. Towson on Tuesday was maybe not so successful, but the sisters have high hopes for the return of students.

“We’re thinking instead of Towson,” she said, “we’re going to try Charles Village and maybe MICA.”

Other gourmet food carts to check out include:

Lil Miss Cupcake services the Inner Harbor and surrounding area with cupcakes in lemon, red velvet and many other flavors.

Grilled Caesar Truck is soon to hit Howard County with Jordan Naftal’s famous grilled caesar salad and creme brulee.

IcedGems offers Baltimoreans not only cupcakes and cookies but novelty cakes!