Maplewood Mall saw a flood of vehicles and people when over a dozen food trucks circled in the parking lot and hungry visitors sampled entrees ranging from comforting brownies to authentic West Indies meat pies, but suffered hour long waits.

A combination of warm weather and the promise of good food brought interest from over 4,000 people who planned to attend the event on Oct. 22. Maplewood Mall hosted the event with free parking and admission, leaving the only cost the actual purchase price of any food.

For some, the food was overpriced.

“$4 for an individual empañada that wasn’t very filling was overpriced, but I wasn’t expecting anything to be cheap,” a customer of Del Sur Empanadas, Matthew Horwath, said.

Others found the pricing to be affordable and fitting for an event hoping to provide a way to sample a range of vendors.

“The pricing on a lot of the trucks weren’t too over the top, and I didn’t feel like I was overspending on the food there,” customer Xai Cheng said.

Before anyone could purchase anything, though, they had to wait in the stretching lines. Lines ranged from 20 minutes of waiting to over an hour.

Participant Belvedere Behnken waited in line one hour and an additional 30 minutes to order as El Jibarito, a truck serving up Latin dishes, tried to complete the backlog ahead.

The lines weren’t ignorable, but in the end, didn’t hamper the experience for most.

“Overall I thought it was fun and a great excuse to get out and about,” participant Camille Matters said. “I enjoyed seeing people come together like this!”

A theme emerged of people using their time conversing with whoever had accompanied them.

“Waiting in line became a pleasant time to chatter and enjoy the sun,” Horwath said.

For the vendors, the lines were much less of a problem.

“Long lines are usually not a big issue, problem is when you have that amount of people trying to eat at the same time, no restaurant or any other food vendor could hand out food fast enough,” Nicolas Nikolov, co-owner of Del Sur Empañadas, said. “We had consumers yesterday that got in line twice because they liked the food so much.”

There were a few elements of overlapping complaints that people hoped are considered if this event becomes an annual tradition.

For example, while the location was listed on the event’s page, some people had to drive the entire circle around the mall to find it.

“I think they should have had signs directing where to go for those not familiar with the mall,” Matters said.

Most unanimously was the request that more food trucks participating would help alleviate lines, provide more options and expand the diversity of cuisines represented.

“I also thought there were going to be more variety of cuisines there. A lot of the trucks were kind of the same so I didn’t feel like I needed to sample a lot,” Cheng said, adding later that he hoped a future iteration would have more variety.

Despite any complaints, a majority agreed the event had been enjoyable and worthwhile to attend, and they hoped it would be repeated.

Attendee Melissa Karner summarized it simply: “It was like the perfect day, perfect weather, perfect everything.”