By Jon O’Connell, Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice
Its Wilkes-Barre sit-down restaurant is shuttered. Its website and Facebook account deleted. Its iconic trucks, The Beast and Mooch, are missing in action.
It all begs the question: “Where’s the fork?”
What The Fork, the food truck that ushered Northeastern Pennsylvania into an era that embraces curbside food vendors, has seemingly vanished.
Numerous people in the community who have done business with What The Fork in recent months sounded shocked at the prospects it could be closed.
Repeated attempts to reach its founder and owner, Mario Bevilacqua of Scranton, on Thursday were unsuccessful. Efforts to reach other employees also failed. A call to the company’s main number went straight to voice mail, which was full.
The company had shown great promise. Founded in 2012, Bevilacqua and crew reached the national stage, appearing on a “Live with Kelly and Michael” food truck competition in 2015 with their famous pulled pork tacos.
In May 2015, What The Fork opened a bricks-and-mortar restaurant in Wilkes-Barre. Its owners had started talks of putting another fixed location in the Marketplace at Steamtown, but those plans caved in.
In February, Bevilacqua had rented office space in the Scranton Enterprise Center business incubator along Lackawanna Avenue. A spokeswoman for the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, which owns the incubator through its development arm SLIBCo, said What The Fork is no longer a tenant, though she did not know exactly when it left.
In Wilkes-Barre, Circles on the Square, a popular deli, named its Thursday specials in light of What The Fork’s apparent disappearance. Among them were ham with horseradish cheddar called “Circles is Hiring” and roast beef on a hard roll called “Where’s The Fork?”
