Fry bread takes the cake at food truck fest

Posted by Krista Allen | Sep 7, 2017 | Business |

Food truck 4 Navajo Times | Krista Allen
Roland Yellowman, owner and operator of Yellowman Fry Bread, hands a plate of fry bread to a customer during the annual Flagstaff Food Truck Festival on Aug. 26.

FLAGSTAFF

It’s noon on a hot Saturday afternoon at the Flagstaff Food Truck Festival. People, mostly non-Natives, are lined up to a colorful food trailer parked at the Flagstaff Community Farmers Market on Aspen Avenue on Aug. 26.

Roland Yellowman is taking orders, and hands them off to the people inside the trailer, in which members of his family – including two of his sisters – press out dough with their hands, forming discs, and begin to “flap,” kicking production into high gear.

Yellowman’s two daughters and a niece were supposed to be there to help make fry bread, but the trio never showed up. “We just flapped as fast as we could,” said Yellowman, owner and operator of Yellowman Fry Bread Co. based in Mesa, Arizona. “It would have been a little easier if the girls came.”

Yellowman is Diné from Niinahnízaadí, New Mexico, and he is Hooghan Lání. His fry bread company, comprised of a food trailer that travels across the country and a food truck that stays only in the Phoenix area, has been drawing crowds (and accolades) since 2008, when Yellowman and his wife, Tina Yellowman, hatched a plan to make fry bread and vend from a truck on the streets.

“It’s actually me, I wanted to stay closer to home (in Mesa) because I have kids still in college,” said Tina Yellowman, who is originally from Minnesota and makes a mean fry bread that non-Natives say tastes “really good,” “like a deep-fried biscuit that’s really flaky.”