Adams Hayne serves up southern dishes with Mediterranean, Latin flair
These days, Columbia’s shaping up to be a pretty cool city. In the last few years it’s seen the opening of a number of restaurants and venues like Cellar on Greene, Cantina 76, the White Mule and the Conundrum Music Hall.
More recently, a crop of food trucks normally found in bigger cities like New York and Los Angeles have sprung up around town.
Alfresco Mobilista, which sells bistro fare its website describes as “simple southern food with a Latin and Mediterranean twist,” is the newest player in Columbia’s burgeoning food truck scene, as it’s been making the rounds for just four weeks.
Already, the truck, headed up by owner and chef Adams Hayne, has made a name for itself and is beginning to build a following.
Hayne opened the truck with the hope of spending more time focusing on his family — especially as he plans to marry his fiancée in October — and adding a more creative dynamic to his food.
“I’ve been a chef for about 20 years, moving all up and down the east coast, and I came back home to Columbia. I wanted to have my own thing, and this is a third of the cost of a freestanding restaurant,” Hayne said, taking a break during a lull in the lunch traffic from nearby Providence Hospital Northeast. “Every chef wants to have control over the food,” he added later.
Already Hayne is putting that freedom to good use, as in his most popular menu item to date, a shrimp burger topped with a tangy remoulade and sweet corn salsa served on a hearty, lightly toasted bun that amounts to a delicious, filling combination.
He also serves “mobilista fries” that are cooked fresh with potatoes cut in-truck and coarse salt that mingle well with malt vinegar and drippings of remoulade sauce.
On deck, Hayne is planning a chicken meatball burrito that will feature Italian influences and be fried like a chimichanga.
His menu also features a number of healthier options, including the Bistro Steak and Jules of the City salads, and Hayne hopes to fill a healthier niche in the local food truck community.
“AlfMob” has also managed to create a fairly strong customer base, especially for its young age and dependence on social media and word of mouth to drum up business.
The truck has already been nominated for the Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race, one of only four trucks in the state and the only in Columbia, and is ranked 53 of 213 trucks nationwide.
For now, though, Hayne’s greatest challenge is one that faces all of Columbia’s trucks.
City Council passed a resolution last week that placed heavy restrictions on outdoor vendors, including food vendors, that requires permits and written permission from the businesses at which they park and other burdensome zoning regulations, including the number of parking spots that must be available for use at each business.
As a result, AlfMob is not currently serving food within the Columbia city limits — though it hopes to have resolved permitting issues by Friday — but continues to set up shop within Richland County and is available for catering as well.
Alfresco still maintains a laid-back ambiance, one that’s evident as Hanye jokes around with his assistant Clayton Ludwigson, whom he met working at Blue Marlin.
As they emphatically recount stories of failing generators (“It must’ve been 130 degrees in here,” remembers Ludwigson) and throw playful jabs back and forth, Ludwigson flips a shrimp patty with a spackling knife.
It’s not exactly standard cooking equipment, but, argues Ludwigson, it’s also “the ultimate grill tool.” Much like their food, it’s creative and offbeat, but it just makes sense.
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