It’s just a baby food truck, really
— the Cultured Swine has only been around since October. Co-owner Corey
Johnson cooks out of Michael Ng’s commissary at Thai Corner and
drives his truck (really, a trailer) to a spot near Tredegar Ironworks.

“I’d gotten the opportunity to see
how he operates, and I like it,” Ng says. “I thought, ‘Let’s put him in this
retail store that we have.'” Johnson, along with partner and longtime friend
Eric Freund, jumped at the chance.

At the beginning of January, Johnson
and Freund will start getting the space on Second Street next to Big Herm’s
Kitchen ready for the brick-and-mortar debut of the Cultured Swine. A late
January/early February opening date is planned.

Johnson grew up in the restaurant
business. “My father was a fisherman,” he says, “and my family had a fish house
down in Portsmouth.” He came to Richmond to attend to VCU and ended up working
in restaurants all over town while he was in school. He found himself on Station
2’s food truck and was offered a management position.

“I didn’t see me doing burgers,”
says Johnson. “That’s when I left and went to Alamo [BBQ] and really started to
focus on the concept of doing barbecue.”

He started thinking about his own
food truck while he was managing the kitchen there. The culinary focus, the
name, even the equipment were the easy parts. “The actual getting-legal aspect
of getting a truck is the hardest part.” It took him about eight months to get
all the paperwork done.

Johnson and Freund will go through
another legal process, including obtaining an ABC license, to get their
restaurant open. It’s a small space — only eight small tables and seven
barstools can fit.

“We’ll have the same menu, but expanded,
that the truck has now,” says Johnson.

He’s looking at street food from around
the world for inspiration — think banh mi — in
addition to the things the truck serves currently, like Korean bulgogi
or Jamaican-inspired jerk chicken served taco-style, and
tamales stuffed with pulled pork and potatoes.

“We’re still in the experimentation
process,” he says.