The barrier to opening a restaurant is high: rent, build-out, staff, and the long odds of the industry. The barrier to opening a food truck is considerably lower, and across Mississippi a growing fleet of them has become a launchpad for some of the state's most adventurous cooks.

The trucks turn up everywhere: outside breweries, at festivals, in office parking lots at lunchtime, parked along downtown streets on weekend nights. Their mobility is their advantage, letting operators chase crowds and test markets without the anchor of a fixed location.

The food ranges widely, from elevated takes on Southern classics to cuisines the state has little brick-and-mortar representation of. For many cooks, the truck is a proving ground, a way to build a following and a business with a fraction of the capital a restaurant demands.

The model has its own hardships, long hours in a cramped kitchen, dependence on weather and events, the grind of constant setup and teardown. But the food truck has become a genuine engine of culinary entrepreneurship in Mississippi, lowering the barrier to a hard industry and putting some of the state's best new cooking on four wheels.