Friday, March 29, 2024

'All-the-way' breakfast: Family-owned food truck makes its mark in Cresson

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CRESSON — For 11 years, Max Mengel has provided drivers on Highway 377 in Cresson with homemade breakfast and lunch — serving customers from inside the comfort of his red food truck.

Max's Kitchen is next door to the Cresson Liquor store on Highway 377, just west of the railroad crossing. The family-owned business serves breakfast burritos and tacos, as well as barbecue, hamburgers and brisket, all at an inexpensive price.

“I went to culinary school and worked in fine dining, but really we (Mengel and his family) would rather come out here and work with the working class people; that’s what we enjoy better,” Mengel said. “We wanted to make all our food homemade from scratch and serve it all at a reasonable price.”

Mengel wakes up at midnight every night so that he can head to work at 1 a.m. to prepare the food from scratch. He works until about three in the afternoon each day.

As for the most popular item on the menu, Mengel isn’t entirely sure — mainly because it changes daily.

“At breakfast, the all-the-way burrito (is the most popular) as it’s got everything in it, or the brisket burrito. At lunch, our burgers and fries are our biggest seller. Or barbecue. Or the burritos. You can never tell,” Mengel said, with a chuckle.

Some customers over the years have been telling Mengel and his family to move the business into a regular building, but he likes the low overhead for the food truck in terms of cost.

“We're all family in here. We don't have employees,” he said. “So as a family, we were just talking about what we'd like to do, but really, the price is good. We like just how it is. We like doing it all as a family because we can really watch the quality.”

This hole-in-the-wall mobile eatery has been described by customers as being a “hidden secret,” “best stop” and the best food they’ve “ever had” on TripAdvisor, proving that Max’s Kitchen is here to stay — at least if the customers have anything to say about it.

Hours of operation are from 6 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 6-11 a.m. on Saturday and closed Sunday and Monday.