The Lehigh Valley is a curious place for food trucks. We’ve written about this before—partially, it’s a function of geography. We just don’t have an obvious, singular centralized spot where they can congregate on an ongoing basis.
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, so you know what does work for food trucks?
Parking and selling food at businesses that are complementary in nature but can’t, or won’t, for various and understandable reasons, add food to their operation. Around here, that means food trucks often develop relationships with a brewery, meadery or a distillery.
For Trè Locally Sourced, a food truck dedicated to local foods and named after a gimpy, three-legged cat that the chef-owner’s wife rescued, it meant hanging out in the gravel parking lot of Eight Oaks Craft Distillers in the rolling countryside of New Tripoli.
For the award-winning (yep, that’s right) Eight Oaks, it meant hitting the jackpot, culinarily and logistically speaking.
“Food trucks were so inconsistent at first. Some would show up, some wouldn’t,” says Chad Butters, one of the owners of Eight Oaks. When Trè started coming, everyone was blown away by the food.
Trè chef-owner Tim Howells, a long-time Allentown resident, has a fine-dining background, and although Trè is not fancy—no food truck is—the fare exceeds the expectations that would typically accompany a mobile makeshift restaurant. Howells brings just enough of that fine-dining panache to the food truck aesthetic to elevate the experience beyond the stereotypical fries, barbecue or tacos.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with those things. You might actually find a taco at Trè, but it’s not a taco truck. I digress.) Imagine a changing menu based on seasons and whims and, let’s face it, how quickly they sell out of things. Roasted mushroom soup, meat and cheese boards, pork nachos (pork anything, really, sells like crazy), poached salmon and Korean short-rib nachos are some of the types of things you’ll find on this inventive menu.
Local made pierogi from Trè Locally Sourced at Eight Oaks
Local Made Pierogi: House-made kraut, chorizosausage and Trè truffle mustard
One of the big draws has been Sunday brunch, and Trè and Eight Oaks often plan special events on the weekends that guarantee crowds. But even if there’s nothing specific on the calendar, it’s worth the drive for many reasons, and people are finding them. One of the surprise hits of the brunch menu is the deceptively simply named Pork and Doughnut. It’s a 24-hour braised pork with a griddled doughnut, breakfast potatoes and a sunny-side-up egg.
There’s a whole lot to say about both of these businesses, and the incredibly funny, warm and gifted people who run them. Butters is a retired veteran who decided in his retirement that he was going to start a distillery. In 2016, that’s what he did. The spirits are produced right on site (you can watch it happen—we wrote about them a few years ago, right after opening), and they’re harvesting grains for those spirits from the acreage surrounding them—it’s a farm-to-bottle operation. (It’s no accident that their purpose-built distillery looks like a barn.) In its first eligible year for submission, Eight Oaks won several medals from the American Distilling Institute, for barrel-aged rum, barrel-aged bourbon and vodka. Its other mainstay spirits include rum and applejack—a spirit distilled from apples. The momentum continues to grow, with creatively aged spirits such as their Pinot Bourbon (bourbon aged in pinot noir barrels), its Port Rye, which is rye whiskey aged in port wine barrels, and its latest, at least as of this writing, the Old Tom Gin—aged in chardonnay barrels for a complex, almost buttery finish. The barrels impart so much through aging.
You may have encountered Eight Oaks somewhere around here. The business is rooted in family and agriculture and, quite literally, love.
The name comes from the way Butters’ grandfather used to sign letters to the family—the number eight represents infinity, and there are eight letters in the words “I love you.” “No one writes letters like that anymore, but nowadays, we use it in the family in sticky notes on the fridge and in texts. What I love about it is that now customers are telling us they are adopting it. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ they say. I get goosebumps talking about it,” says Butters.
And the oak—well, that’s a reference to barrels.
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They were an early partner in Easton, with the farmers’ and public markets, with a stand set up in the latter. (You can also find them at markets in Allentown, York, Harrisburg and at Reading Terminal in Philly.) Altogether, Eight Oaks has just under 30 employees, many of them family members, and each one of those locations has its own team dedicated to selling the spirits. “The universe of people who work with us are like adopted family, and it creates this awesome vibe,” says Carly Butters Snyder, Butters’ daughter and distillery general manager. It’s a sentiment that Howells echoes, too. “This place has such camaraderie and is so welcoming,” he says.
But it’s not just going to stay as a food truck. At this writing, there was some ad hoc kitchen set-up taking place inside the distillery, and Chad Butters hints at desires for expansion but won’t divulge anything specific.
The conversation that was responsible for what I saw went kind of like this.
Butters: “How do I get you to stay here every day?”
Howells: “Build me a kitchen!”
It’s a bit oversimplified, of course.
“We’re continuing to morph,” Butters says. “When we started this, we didn’t really know what was going to happen. But we always wanted to create a destination experience.”
And that’s what’s happened. There are already wineries nearby (Clover Hill, for example), and there’s a real sense of agritourism at this end of the Valley, where people who come and visit are really into what they’re exploring in the region, whether it’s a winery, distillery, roadside stands, The Nesting Box in Kempton (incredible ice cream), Wanamakers General Store or Hawk Mountain, or any of the many trails. People are finding the distillery from New Jersey, New York and Maryland. “They’re staying at Airbnbs, they’re not staying at hotels, so they’re looking for a more unique experience,” says Butters.
Heck, I live here and I definitely wouldn’t mind an overnight in this part of the Valley. It feels so far removed from everything and like “someplace else,” in a way that’s increasingly tricky to experience this close to home. We’re lucky. “There’s a ton of preserved farmland out here, and so it’s not going to be all waterslides and theme parks. Coming out here will remain an agriculturally rooted experience,” says Butters.
Cheeseburger tacos from Trè Locally Sourced at Eight Oaks
Cheeseburger Tacos: Local grass-fed beef, jalapeño, pickled red onions, cotija, Trè sauce and organic blue corn tortillas
Eight Oaks Craft Distillers & Trè Locally Sourced
Hours
Distillery Tasting Room Hours: Thurs.: Noon–5 p.m.; Fri & Sat.:Noon–9 p.m.; Sun.: Noon–5 p.m.
Trè: Fri.: 5–8 p.m.; Sat.: 2–8 p.m.; Sun.: Noon-5 p.m. (Thursday hours are being contemplated!)
Parking
Giant lot on the premises
What to Order
Well, the cocktail list evolves—there’s always the classics, but I recommend ordering a “farm-crafted cocktail.” In the summer, that could mean a strawberry basil mule, or a lavender martini (which is what I had and it was divine, although I had it with gin). Seasonal items will always find their way into the cocktail menu. You can visit for a tour or to eat from Trè, but there’s live music on Saturdays typically from 3 to 6 p.m., and various special events take place on the weekends. It’s really easy to while away a couple hours here—the vistas from the patio behind the distillery are lovely and there are mini firepits and corn hole to relax and amuse. The food truck menu evolves, but don’t miss anything with pulled pork, pierogis or the crazy Pork and Doughnut for a truly different brunch experience.
7189 Rte. 309, New Tripoli | 484.387.5287 | eightoaksdistillers.com
