Cinnamon Snail's Adam Sobel brings new food truck to Red Bank
It is no secret that Adam Sobel is one of the most well-known names in vegan cooking in New Jersey, New York and beyond.
It was a secret, kind of, that after closing The Cinnamon Snail, his wildly popular food truck and restaurant, he snuck back into the business.
Sobel, who shuttered The Cinnamon Snail in 2020, launched a food truck called Galactic MegaStallion last summer at the Red Bank farmers market. The endeavor began after a campaign of intentionally cryptic billboards, a nonsensical website and logo, a lack of social media presence, and a phone number that connected to a mysterious voicemail message.
"I wanted to do something different to get the word out, in a way that would fit the elusive nature of this new food venture," Sobel shared on his website, cinnamonsnail.com. "I made this witness protection plan-esque recording of an artificial voice reading of a cypher that could help people decode the symbols on the billboards, which would send them to a special website."
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The lucky few who cracked the code were rewarded with GPS coordinates for the food truck at the Sunday farmers market at Bridge Avenue and West Front Street.
"I was pleasantly surprised that quite a few people figured it out and found us," said Sobel, who lives in the borough.
Galactic MegaStallion, crafted from a falafel cart, is a much smaller operation than his wildly popular Cinnamon Snail business, which before closing comprised the restaurant, food truck, catering and pastry operations, and dozens of employees.
"I found myself stressed out all the time, less able to be creative with food, and finding myself more often in meetings, on calls with lawyers, and dealing with emergencies at all hours of the day and night," Sobel shared. "I was burnt out and felt like I didn’t have time to apply my creativity to the food anymore in the way that I had when I started."
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On the new truck, where his only employees are his daughters, he is offering a different vegan menu each year. The inaugural menu was Middle Eastern food; this year it's Southeast Asian street food.
Customers can enjoy dishes like an Indonesian-inspired grilled coconut sticky rice with green papaya sambal and fried curry leaves; chili paste-roasted seitan with pickled daikon, cucumbers and Szechuan chili oil noodles; and Malaysian-spiced peanut French toast with clove ganache, whipped pandan butter and lemongrass palm sugar syrup.
Sobel puts out tables and chairs where customers can sit and enjoy their meals, served on real plates.
Galactic MegaStallion operates "less like a food truck, and more like a pop-up outdoor restaurant," he said.
The new enterprise "has been a bit of an experiment for me to answer one important existential question that was on my mind during the pandemic: Can a food business thrive without playing by any of the rules of modern food service?" Sobel said.
"No credit cards, no P.O.S. (point-of-sale system), no delivery, no social media, no set menus, no hard and fast rules that I don’t create for me to operate within the confines of. Let's find out."
Go: Find Sobel at the Red Bank farmers market, which runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays through mid-November, in The Galleria parking lot, Bridge Avenue and West Front Street. His food truck is cash only; cinnamonsnail.com/galactic-megastallion.
Sarah Griesemer joined the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey in 2003 and has been writing all things food since 2014. Send restaurant tips to [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Adam Sobel of Cinnamon Snail is back at Red Bank farmers market
