Popular food truck travels the intermountain west, and eastern Idaho is one of its regular stops
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IDAHO FALLS – You may have noticed long lines in the parking lot of Natural Grocers in Idaho Falls on Wednesday.
Eager customers lined up to place their orders from On the Hook Fish and Chips, a food truck that began serving in eastern Idaho several months ago.
It also made a stop in Blackfoot Thursday. You’ll be able to sample their menu in October when they come through the area again.
For $12, you can get three large pieces of fresh beer-battered Alaskan Cod and a plate of fries with its famous dipping sauces.
“It’s wild Alaskan cod hand beer-battered on our trucks, and it comes with a plate of our beer-battered fries, one sriracha mayo, one tartar sauce, and a couple packets of ketchup,” co-owner Ocean Andrew tells EastIdahoNews.com.
You can also order fish and fries individually. The batter is created from scratch and is its original recipe.
Andrew and Hunter Andersen started the business in May 2016. Andrew grew up fishing with his dad and thought about opening a seafood restaurant.
“My father’s the captain of the Northern Leader, which is part of (a fleet of fishing boats) in Alaska. That’s where we get all our fish and why my family was interested in opening a fish and chips restaurant,” Andrew tells EastIdahoNews.com.
As a student at the University of Wyoming, he began watching a series on YouTube called “The Great Food Truck Race,” and that inspired him even more. He spent his class time with Andersen discussing his business idea.
“We just started it that summer. We got our truck in March and we started serving at the end of May,” Andrew says.
It began in Wyoming, but through a lot of hard work, the business has since evolved into a multi-truck enterprise serving hundreds of thousands of customers in eight different states. Andrew and Andersen now own seven trucks and a team of people drive 1,000 miles a week to serve customers in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Utah, Idaho and Kansas.
“We like the culture of the Mountain West and the Midwest. They’re very humble people, really hard-working, blue-collar people. They just really appreciate our product, and a lot of these towns don’t get good seafood, so us going there provides a good treat once a month or so,” says Andrew.
They would eventually like to have a truck in every state and plan to one day expand their menu and open a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
On The Hook made its first stop in Idaho this summer. It visits Preston, Pocatello, Blackfoot and Idaho Falls and will soon expand into the Boise area.
On the Hook visits eastern Idaho once a month. You can sign up for email notifications through its website to know when it will be in the area again.
“Idaho has been really really supportive, so a huge thank you. We really appreciate it, and we look forward to serving in Idaho for a long time,” Andrew says.
A schedule of On The Hook’s stops is posted every Monday. Visit its Facebook page to learn more.