Faced with a longer-than-expected timeline for opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Palo Alto, the owner of gourmet hot dog restaurant Chez Franc has decided to launch a food truck.
The restaurant is still en-route to California Avenue, with construction expected to begin at the end of the month or by early May, but owner Jacquetta Lannan, a former attorney and culinary school graduate, doesn't want to wait any longer.
"We're just so ready to get started," she said Thursday. "This has been a process ? we really started in January of 2013 just to get the ball rolling and its taken so much longer than I ever would have expected."
Lannan snagged the 415 California Ave. space (vacated by Know Knew Books) in September of that year, and has been paying rent since then. At the time, she said she expected to be open by December or January.
"If you would have asked me a year ago, I would have said we would be open in April," she said in February. "If you had asked last summer, I would have said the end of the year."
So last weekend, she bought a food truck and hopes to be serving housemade dogs, sausages and possibly sandwiches and hamburgers by Memorial Day (May 26). The truck will operate in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
Lannan also finally divulged who will be in charge of cooking up Chez Franc fare: Dan Sung, a longtime sous chef at The Village Pub in Woodside. She said he'll be starting a few weeks before the food truck's debut.
The truck's menu will include an all-beef sausage topped with peach salsa, prosciutto, fresh buratta, basil and balsamic (get a visual here) and a bacon-wrapped hot dog with crema, avocado and salsa, among others.
