It seems food trucks are on everyone’s radar these days. Food establishments on wheels offer a fresh spin on dining. They’re portable and often spontaneous (who doesn’t love the thrill of the chase?) and are a fun-loving enterprise by nature. When diners agree to eat with their fingers roadside, they give chefs license to be innovate and create delicious and sometimes wacky dishes (cheeseburger sushi, anyone?). That doesn’t mean food trucks compromise tact or flavor. Food trucks wouldn’t have established a steady presence in Paris if they didn’t deliver honestly delicious fare that has hundreds of customers waiting in line daily.

Food trucks are now a mainstay of the city landscape. Is it any surprise that their lingo may become a part of American slang? NPR’s food blog The Salt keeps things light with an interview with critic, historian, and writer John T. Edge. Edge has traveled the United States to taste what food trucks have to offer, and then he wrote a book about it. The Food Truck Cookbook is “part recipe collection, part travelogue and part social analysis of the food truck trend.” In it, Edge shares some of the terms that might one day be a part of everyday vernacular, including ventrification  (the gentrification of the street food vending game), nonstaurant (a non-traditional restaurant in a non-traditional setting) and B&M (a brick and mortar restaurant, as opposed to one that moves). Sure, they may seem a little silly, but Edge’s book is an investigation and homage to the burgeoning food truck market, and that’s something to talk about. [The Salt]