Business & Tech

Maxwell St. Brings Chicago-Style Street Food To Mountain View

The food truck has entered into partnership with Francesca's Sports Bar and Grill.

Only three weeks old, Maxwell St. Food Truck hopes to make meat-eaters satisfied in the South Bay.

Owned by veteran chef Brandon Paige, a San Francisco resident who grew up in Chicago's East Side, the brand-spanking new food truck has entered into partnership with Francesca's Sports Bar and Grill on Old Middlefield Way.

"Mountain View is ideal for me," Paige, a former Mountain View resident, said. "It's about to blow up and many people aren't paying attention. Except for those who are."

Maxwell St. specializes in Chicago-style street food, which came from Maxwell Street, an open air street market popular from the turn of the 20th century. The store owners on Maxwell Street would invite musicians to play and eventually vendors began to sell Chicago street food, like pork chop sandwiches with sport peppers, Italian beef and polish sausage.

Maxwell Street started to decline in the 1990s and eventually the University of Illinois at Chicago bought out the land.

"The Maxwell Street brand is timeless," he said about the famed street, which no longer exists. "But Chicago remembers it."

The 33-year-old got his first cooking job at 15 and then when to cooking school in San Francisco. His first job was at Alioto's in Fisherman's Wharf. Paige said that's where he learned how to expedite that is, run the kitchen.

Afterward he went on to Aqua, a Michael Mina restaurant, and the Village Pub in Woodside. Of the 17 years since graduation, he's been an executive chef for 10 years.

His partnership with Francesca's includes the use of the kitchen for the food truck, but under the Francesca's brand he plans to offer grill cheese sandwiches, hot wings and other bar classics.

Maxwell St. will be around for lunch in downtown Mountain View at Church and Castro Streets and Paige hopes to team up with events like Moveable Feast.

This is his first food truck, one of three he hopes to have.

"I thought about it eight years ago, and didn't do it," Paige said. "It's a good time to do it and it's here to stay."


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