RED BANK: KALE, SEITAN… AND PORK ROLL?

The Johnny Pork Roll truck is a new addition at the Red Bank Farmer’s Market in the Galleria parking lot. (Photo by Jim Willis. Click to enlarge)

By JIM WILLIS

After a long winter, Mother Nature is taking her sweet time this spring, making us wait for the vast array of produce we’re accustom to seeing on Sundays at the Red Bank Farmer’s Market.

We will wait an extra week or two for the bounty of beans and other spring crops to make it to the Galleria parking lot. In the meantime, though, a new food truck – Johnny Pork Roll – means that PieHole followers can nosh on nature’s most perfect food: the pork roll, egg and cheese sandwich.

John Yarusi, aka Johnny Pork Roll, tells PieHole he’s excited to be part of the Farmer’s Market. “It’s a really great scene,” he says. “The other vendors, whether it’s the bee guy or the pickle guy, they’re all super-cool and receptive and helpful.”

Yarusi was prepping for Sunday when we spoke with him Friday morning.  After selling out of pork roll before noon on his first few appearances at the market, he tells PieHole he learned he needs to start slicing and cutting well ahead of time to get ready for the demand.

The truck joins the widely praised vegan cuisine vendor Cinnamon Snail and Freezy Freeze instant ice cream on the lot. Theirony of selling pork roll from a truck while surrounded by kale and spinach and parked next to a vegan mecca on wheeels is not lost on Yarusi.

“The dichotomy of a pork roll truck next to the Cinnamon Snail is awesome,” he says.

“Adam Sobel is in a whole other league,” Yarusi says of the popular vegan chef from Red Bank. “He’s the real deal. Food trucks are cool because of people like him,” says Yarusi.

Still, after a Cinnamon Snail fan posted a picture on Facebook with a long line at the vegan truck contrasted with an empty Johnny Pork Roll truck proclaiming “victory for vegans” in her caption, Yarusi is thinking about staging a “meat-in” to get a bunch of meat-eaters to show up so the vegans will stop taunting the pork roll fans. Yarusi, by the way, says the pork roll truck was empty in the photo because they’d sold out of pork roll.

“I joke though, it’s all great food,” says Yarusi.