the LEXICON of Real American Food

Like the word barbecue, hot truck has several meanings. It is a destination: the food truck that parks at 635 Stewart Avenue at the edge of West Campus at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It is the cuisine served by that food truck. And it is the language used to describe that cuisine.

Hot truck, the food, is a hot submarine—baked open-face on a length of Ithaca Bakery French bread, then folded over to become a heavy sandwich. The terms used to describe iterations of the sandwich are so cryptic that a Hot Truck Dictionary exists for novitiates. In the dictionary you will learn that “G and G” is short for “grease and garden,” meaning mayonnaise and lettuce. “Hot and heavy” means extra measures of red pepper and garlic. A “sui”—short for “suicide,” and pronounced “sooey,” like the pig call—gets its name because it is piled with a murderous quantity of ground sausage, pepperoni, and mushrooms on a bed of tomato sauce under a mound of melted mozzarella.

The original hot truck, created in 1960 by Bob Petrillose, was a PMP (Poor Man’s Pizza): sauce and cheese spread on a butterflied half-loaf of French bread and baked in his truck’s pizza oven. Ithaca folklore says that one of the students who assisted Petrillose in hot truck’s early days took the idea to Cleveland and sold it to Stouffer’s, begetting French Bread Pizza. In fact, Stouffer’s VP of manufacturing in 1962, when the company introduced frozen prepared foods, was Cornell Hotel School graduate C. Alan MacDonald; French-bread pizzas were launched twelve years later, in 1974.

When we sought a recipe from the Smith family, who now run the Hot Truck and the Shortstop Deli, both of which sell French-bread pizzas, they suggested the Sep Pep, which is a WGC with mushrooms and pepperoni. What’s a WGC? Simple: wet garlic with cheese. What’s wet about the garlic? In Hot Truck lingo, wet means tomato sauce. According to our Hot Truck Dictionary, the WGC has less cheese than a double PMP (which is, of course, the original basic formulation of bread, sauce, and cheese).

Garlic Sauce

1¼ sticks butter (10 tablespoons)

1 tablespoon granulated garlic

In a medium bowl, microwave the butter until completely melted. Add the garlic and mix thoroughly.

Pizza Sauce

1 cup tomato juice

2 cups pizza sauce with basil

1 tablespoon granulated garlic

½ tablespoon salt

In a medium bowl, mix the tomato juice, pizza sauce, garlic, and salt. Stir thoroughly.

Pizza Subs

2 full loaves hearty French bread (about 24 inches total)

3 cups sliced mushrooms

3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

2 cups sliced pepperoni

1 tablespoon oregano

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Cut the French bread loaves in half and slice them open horizontally ⅓ from the top. (This will allow the French bread to lay flat in the oven to prevent burning edges.)

3. Use a brush to spread the Garlic Sauce onto the French bread.

4. Use a ladle or spoon to spread the Pizza Sauce on the bread, being sure to cover it out to the edges (to prevent burning).

5. Divide mushrooms and mozzarella among the bread. Spread ½ cup (about 20 slices) of pepperoni across each half loaf. Sprinkle on oregano.

6. Transfer the sandwiches to a baking sheet and bake until all the cheese is melted and the French bread is golden brown, 8–10 minutes. When cooked, fold the top half of the French bread over the bottom half to make sandwiches.

HOT TRUCK