{"id":13650,"date":"2016-08-13T06:59:49","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T12:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13650"},"modified":"2016-08-14T07:41:43","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T13:41:43","slug":"noodles-obrien-aims-at-fast-food-made-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/08\/noodles-obrien-aims-at-fast-food-made-healthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Noodles O’Brien aims at ‘fast food made healthy’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Noodles\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Paul O’Brien will be serving food out of his Noodles O’Brien food cart for the first time next Saturday, at Thirsty Street Brewing Co.<\/p><\/div>\n

Paul O\u2019Brien was nearing the completion of his doctorate in physical therapy when he had a life-changing thought.<\/p>\n

He liked doing physical therapy, but he realized he didn\u2019t really love it. Talking to his then-girlfriend, he wondered aloud what he could throw himself into that he was truly passionate about.<\/p>\n

As O\u2019Brien recalled it, she looked at him and said, \u201cIt\u2019s food. Are you kidding me? It\u2019s so obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was right, he said. \u201cI\u2019ve had a passion for food for quite a while. It was hiding right under my nose.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to earn his doctor of physical therapy degree anyway, from the University of Montana in 2014. He then spent a year as a roving physical therapist, plying his trade in different cities while making a study of various street-food scenes. He has been doing PT for Rocky Mountain Home Care for the past year.<\/p>\n

In the midst of all that, in 2015, he completed his work on a master\u2019s in business administration, which he also earned from UM. The idea was that he\u2019d use his earnings as a physical therapist to open his own food trailer, and his MBA to do it right.<\/p>\n

A week from today, on Saturday, Aug. 20, O\u2019Brien will introduce Billings people to his passion for food when he opens his Noodles O\u2019Brien trailer for the first time, at the Thirsty Street Brewing Co<\/a>., 3008 First Ave. N. His trailer will be in the parking lot between Thirsty Street and Angry Hank\u2019s brewery, serving food from 4 to 9 p.m.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>O\u2019Brien, a 2005 graduate of Billings Senior High School, said his goal is to run a food cart that serves the best, most healthful food available, using fresh ingredients from as close to home as possible. The motto for his business is \u201cFast food made healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He will start with four noodle bowls, two with semolina wheat noodles and two with rice noodles. In any of the dishes, he will substitute zucchini noodles as a gluten-free, low-carb alternative.<\/p>\n

One wheat dish is cheesy noodles, made with cheddar and cream cheese from Lifeline Farms in the Bitterroot Valley. The other is a chilled Greek noodle salad with red wine vinegar and olive oil, Kalamata olives, feta cheese, red onion, tomato and zucchini.<\/p>\n

As for rice noodles, he\u2019ll have a Thai curry dish and spicy drunken noodles. The curry bowl will be vegan, with peppers, onion and kale, and the drunken noodle dish will be a spicy concoction with coconut oil, chili peppers and onion.<\/p>\n

All dishes will come without meat, but you\u2019ll be able to add meat to any dish\u2014chicken, beef or bacon, \u201cbecause everyone loves bacon,\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien said he loves meat but tries to eat it only on weekends, to avoid overdoing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I can feed someone a bowl of noodles and they don\u2019t realize right away that it doesn\u2019t have any meat but they really like it anyway, that\u2019s a positive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As for the fast part, O\u2019Brien said all the preparation will be done in the Billings Food Bank\u2019s shared-use kitchen. On site, par-cooked noodles will be quickly heated up in hot water. The meat will be pressure-cooked and shredded, then reheated in its own broth.<\/p>\n

The Noodles O\u2019Brien trailer has its own internet hot spot and patrons will be able to place their orders on two Clover pads equipped with chip and card readers. People can also pay using Google or Apple and the pads will print receipts. The order then goes to a printer, ready to be filled.<\/p>\n

His bowls are made from sugarcane fiber, his forks are plant-based, and the napkins are made out of recycled paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to use as sustainable an approach as I can,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien worked with established chefs, mainly at the Lilac caf\u00e9, to develop a list of suppliers to provide him with local ingredients.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t get everything from Montana,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I\u2019m keeping it regional.\u201d He will also be using Sysco to supply him ingredients that are not made in the region, including coconut milk and fish sauce.<\/p>\n

After the grand opening at Thirsty Street, O\u2019Brien will be serving at the Cherry Tree Inn, 823 N. Broadway, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays; at the YMCA, 402 N. 32nd St., from 11 to 7 on Thursdays and 11 to 2 on Fridays; and at Thirsty Street from 3 to 9 p.m. on Fridays and 11 to 9 on Saturdays.<\/p>\n

O’Brien said he considered a variety of foods when he began thinking of opening a food cart, including waffle sandwiches, nachos, macaroni and cheese varieties, even popcorn. He settled on noodles because he\u2019s always loved cooking pasta and because he wanted something that would be relatively simple, with few ingredients.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s sold on the concept of a food cart. If this venture succeeds, he said, he won\u2019t try to move into a brick-and-mortar location.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather expand my footprint in the street-food scene,\u201d he said, possibly by opening additional carts on the West End and in the Heights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul O\u2019Brien was nearing the completion of his doctorate in physical therapy when he had a life-changing thought. He liked doing physical therapy, but he realized he didn\u2019t really love it. Talking to his then-girlfriend, he wondered aloud what he could throw himself into that he was truly passionate about. As O\u2019Brien recalled it, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[4829,647,4827,4828,63,664],"class_list":["post-13650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-diversions","tag-cherry-tree-inn","tag-lilac","tag-paul-obrien","tag-thirsty-street-brewing","tag-university-of-montana","tag-ymca","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}