Dallas’ campiest new food truck blends healthy eating with a dash of queer sass
If necessity is the mother of invention, hunger is the mother of food trucks.
That’s how it worked out, at least, for Marisa Diotalevi.
About a year ago, her teenaged daughter was pecking for a snack. What to eat? Tacos? Sandwiches? Funnel cake? Everything, it seemed, was fried or fattening or at least not the healthy snack every mom hopes to give her kid. Mom suggested fruit.
Great idea, her daughter agreed — but from where?
And almost like that, Diotalevi became a mother for a second time.
She saw an opening in the market for healthy, delicious and reasonably-priced snacks, and a food truck seemed like the perfect to bring her idea to the people.
The Fruit Bowl, which has driven the byways of North Texas since March, serves a choice of seasonal three fruits — strawberry, mango, kiwi, banana and a host more — in three sized bowls, plus offers optional add-ons like yogurt and complimentary toppings like chocolate sauce or honey. (Hey, it’s fruit — it can still be healthy with chocolate!). But perhaps nothing sets it apart more than Diotalevi herself.
A comedian and actor of long-standing in North Texas, she’s known for her wit and wackiness, which she imbues in the truck: It’s decorated in Day-Glo orange, plastered with Diotalevi’s face, festooned with a Carmen Miranda-esque fruit headdress. She wears a kitschy apron when serving customers. No truck has ever looked gayer… or more inviting.
Hey, if there’s one thing the LGBTQ community knows about, it’s how to camp it up. And fruits for the fruit? Well, that was basically a no-brainer. █
— Arnold Wayne Jones
Follow The Fruit Bowl @rolloutthefruit.
