Brides seeking slightly offbeat palate-pleasers for their reception needn’t look any further than the nearest street corner. The kitschy food truck where you get your morning coffee, satisfy your burrito craving or appease your sweet tooth is likely more than happy to serve up street fare at your wedding as well. Don’t expect standard steamed hot dogs and soft pretzels, though—today’s food mobiles are serving restaurant-quality curbside cuisine.

Ice Cream Truck For Hire

Fernanda Armoza Aldous of Gold Coast Ice Cream Truck Co. in New York (goldcoasticecream.com) stresses that offering up tried-and-true culinary hits with a twist usually makes for the best street fare experience. Her ice-cream-truck-for-hire dishes out dozens of traditional ice cream novelties. “Nobody can resist a classic Good Humor Bar,” she says. She lovingly restored an authentic 1967 Good Humor truck to tiptop shape and now sends a fully uniformed Good Humor man to weddings as far as three hours from New York City.

Late Night Snacks

Wafels and Dinges’ Thomas Degeest, also in New York (wafelsanddinges.com), explains that versatility is the name of the game when it comes to serving up street food. “The truck is pretty popular to ‘close the party,’” he says. Many brides hire Wafels and Dinges to park outside the reception for guests to snag a late night snack of freshly baked waffles topped with sundae-esque toppings called “dinges” (Belgian for “whattchamacallits”). The restaurant-on-wheels is no one-trick-truck, though: It’s also popular for farewell brunches. “The buffet is popular for the morning-after breakfast with family,” Degeest adds. “We can go pretty fancy with a number of savory waffle options that include smoked salmon with lemon-dill sour cream, or a bacon waffle.”

Sweets On the Big Day

Brides are using food trucks as a fresh take on traditional wedding food, too. Kim Ima of the Manhattan-based Treats Truck (treatstruck.com) brings couples their favorite sweets on the big day, often as a substitute for a wedding cake. “We catered a fun wedding in Queens at a park,” she says. “Instead of a cake, they had our truck come filled with their favorites, including ice cream cone cupcakes, which they toasted each other with.” She’s also served pecan pies, orange chiffon cakes and other treats alongside traditional wedding cakes right out of the truck.

Comfort Food

And street-based fare isn’t limited to the New York area. Los Angeles-based chef Brian Hill serves up simple, sexy food from his Comfort Truck (comforttruck.com), a gourmet restaurant on wheels. After working as a personal chef for A-list celebrities, Hill decided to shift gears and do what he does best: craft home-cooked, people-pleasing meals. “We’ll serve brides a sample of our fried chicken sliders and their knees will buckle,” he says of his signature dish. “Or for events we’ll do a creamy mac-and-cheese; a white bean, tomato and corn vegan relish; and Kalamata olive salad. I want people to say ‘I can’t wait to dig in,’ and that’s what I want to feel, too.”

Brook Howell of Frysmith (eatfrysmith.com) in Los Angeles gets straight to the heart of the matter with her high-end take on the munchy favorite. “A lot of requests we’ve gotten are for late night snacks at the tail end of the reception,” she says. “They’re also fun during the cocktail hour, especially if the guests are beer drinkers! Our core menu includes a gourmet iteration of chili cheese fries that’s flavored with beer and a hint of chocolate.” Smith also encourages experimentation, often playing with Latin and Asian flavors when preparing the all-American snack. “The most popular fries are rajas: steak-marinated, shawarma-style on top of roasted poblano chile peppers, caramelized onions and cheese.” Other favorites include sweet potato fries with free-range chicken and kimchi fries with Kurobuta pork belly.

Going Custom

Custom menus aren’t out of reach, either. Most trucks are happy to accommodate brides seeking exclusive dishes or spins on old favorites, and they’ll even provide options for guests with dietary restrictions. Gold Coast Ice Cream will serve up Pareve, dairy-free ice cream for kosher events, and the Frysmith is happy to concoct special requests for health-conscious or diet-restricted guests.

The Basics

Prices and limitations vary, but booking a truck almost always includes a consultation with the chef to determine a menu and a per-head cost. Brides should also be aware of permit issues; ask the chef what legal limitations apply and whom they should contact to get proper permits for the truck. “As long as the bride has an event permit, we do all the legwork for our own truck permits,” says Aldous.

Chefs cited reactions to the truck as their favorite part of the job. “Possibly our biggest compliment ever was when we were booked by a bride as a surprise wedding gift to her groom, a huge fan of vintage Good Humor trucks,” says Aldous. “They brought him out and the look on his face was the best moment of the season.”

Hill agrees, explaining that brides often get feedback from delighted guests long after the wedding is over. “For a reception, it’s absolutely a talking point,” he says. “In 20 years someone will say to you, ‘Hey, remember how you had that food truck at your wedding?’”