A food truck from Denver won the coveted Golden Plate Award at the annual Governor’s Plate Contest at the Colorado State Fair on August 27, while the contest’s reigning champion from Pueblo took home the People’s Choice Award.
Pueblo’s food trucks have now won the People’s Choice Award at the fair for three years in a row, after Papa Mario’s Grilled Cheese Food Truck previously won the award in 2022 and 2023.
Proto Taste’s concept won the Governor’s Plate Award, while Pueblo’s Stoke Pizza, the 2023 Golden Plate winner, received the People’s Choice Award.
Proto Taste, a company with several food truck concepts that also rents trailers to people looking to open their own food truck, competed with a thin-sliced grilled steak drizzled with Palisade peach steak sauce and topped with grilled onions, grilled peaches and melted brie cheese, all in a hoagie bun from Colorado-based City Bakery.
“(What stood out to me was) really the bold flavors as well as the way it highlighted Colorado ingredients, everything from Colorado beef to onions to Pueblo chiles. (It was) really exciting to see them all together,” Gov. Jared Polis said after the competition.
Pueblo’s Stoke Pizza won the People’s Choice Award with a wood-fired potato pizza made with San Luis Valley potatoes.
Food Truck winners react to their victories
Denver-based Proto Taste/Guilty Pleasures Grub Chef Lex Mendez told the chief that he was grateful and proud to have won the Governor’s Plate. “It’s an incredible feeling. We all worked so hard. I couldn’t have done it without the team… it’s such an honor and a beautiful state,” he said.
Guilty Pleasures Grub is a sub-concept of Proto Taste, Mendez said.
“We also rent our truck to other chefs who may not be able to afford a food truck or just need one for their restaurant – we think everyone should have the chance to cook and get products out there,” he said.
Mendez said Proto Taste Philly’s regular truck sells cheesesteaks, hot dogs and French fries, doing “one thing very well.” For their contribution to the Governor’s Plate, all of the ingredients, including the vegetables, were sourced from Colorado, Mendez said.
Meanwhile, husband and wife team Bre and Wes Latka of Stoke Pizza were proud to take home the People’s Choice Award for their wood-fired pizza.
“It feels really good because Denver is known for a lot of things, the big city is ‘where it’s at,'” Bre Latka said. “And to be able to showcase what Pueblo is all about: It’s local, it’s small town, it’s homegrown.”
Latka said Stoke Pizza chose the baked potato concept with lots of ingredients because they “felt that they would all represent peaches because, well, Palisade peaches are incredible.”
“And the San Luis Valley potato has kind of been forgotten,” she said. “So we really wanted to feature the potato on our pizza this year.”
Polis talks about local agriculture and calls Pueblo the “culinary capital” of the region
In an interview during the event, Polis explained that when selecting from the many entries, the selection committee looked for chefs and food trucks that offer food grown in Colorado.
“Hopefully not just one menu item, but we want the majority of the menu to be from Colorado – from Colorado farmers and ranchers – peaches, dairy, beef, whatever,” Polis said.
Participating food trucks had to be registered members of Colorado Proud, which was developed in 1999 by the Colorado Department of Agriculture as a free program to help consumers, restaurants and retailers identify and purchase Colorado-grown food and agricultural products.
“People are really excited about Colorado Proud because it means consumers, all of us, know, ‘This was grown in Colorado.’ So we know it’s fresher, it’s a shorter distance to market, and we’re supporting our neighbors. And Coloradans are really excited to see that in our local grocery stores, at their farmers markets, and here at the Governor’s Plate in Pueblo.”
The governor noted that with four of the seven food trucks based in Pueblo, Pueblo is “establishing itself as the culinary capital of not only Colorado, but the entire region.”
“Of course, the long agricultural heritage of Pueblo and the San Luis Valley is clearly evident, not only here on Governor’s Plate, but throughout the State Fair and throughout Colorado,” he said.
Other Governor’s Plate participants
Five other competitors, three from Pueblo and two from elsewhere, competed for this year’s Governor’s Plate.
Mother Smothers, a Pueblo food truck specializing in “smothering all of Pueblo’s favorite foods,” including sloppers, tacos, fries, burgers and sandwiches, serves San Luis Valley mashed potatoes topped with award-winning green chile.
Food truck and catering truck SmithGrubs is another Pueblo truck that serves a variety of dishes from barbecue to tacos, steak to General Tsao’s chicken and egg rolls, according to its website. SmithGrubs competed with a cinnamon roll with Palisade peaches.
Wings on Wheels, a Pueblo-based food truck that offers wings, nachos, smash burgers, mac and cheese, sloppers and green chile fries, served a burger slider with Palisade peach compote. This popular food truck was voted the best in the Steel City by Chieftain readers earlier this year.
Wheat Ridge-based Lady In the Wild offers a rotating seasonal menu “featuring seasonal ingredients used at their peak and prepared in a way that highlights their unique flavor,” according to the food truck’s website. For the competition, Lady In the Wild presented a Moroccan-spiced lamb meatball dish with pickled onions, Green Goddess hummus, Palisade peach jam and chimichurri.
MC2 Arvada-based Ice Cream Truck is best known for winning the Guinness World Record for most flavors on display at one time, with 985 flavors. For the Governor’s Plate, they made a gluten-free Palisade peach and whiskey pecan ice cream with Stranahan’s Whiskey flavor.
More pictures of the Governor’s Plate: Food trucks from Pueblo compete at the Colorado State Fair
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