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Wednesday, November 11, 2026Nov 11

Food trucks finding their place in Chattanooga area

Photo by Anne Braly / Food Truck Alley, which opened in February at 503 Market St., provides a weekend home for food trucks in downtown Chattanooga.
Photo by Anne Braly / Food Truck Alley, which opened in February at 503 Market St., provides a weekend home for food trucks in downtown Chattanooga. Photo by Anne Braly / Food Truck Alley, which opened in February at 503 Market St., provides a weekend home for food trucks in downtown Chattanooga.

Who knew food trucks could be so much fun? Hard work to be sure, but fun? Darci Cena, owner of Nonni’s Empanada’s, opened her truck in June.

“I love to cook,” she said. “My passion is cooking.”

She and her husband, Jim, owned a Taste of Argentina truck a decade ago, but she said they were ahead of the curve at the time and both quit their jobs to do it, so that wasn’t so much fun.

“It was very stressful,” she said. “The city was making it hard.”

But, after selling that truck, the 50-year-old mother and grandmother continued to make her empanadas for family and friends and just about anybody else who asked.