The Food dude is almost done with "On The SPOT"

Bent over a sizzling griddle set up on a downtown Denver corner, Mike Winston and Elliot Jones assembled a dish whose ingredients sounded more at home on a menu at the nearby Ritz-Carlton: roast lamb, tzatziki sauce, napa cabbage, guajillo-mint foam and naan, a classic bread of India.

But this was a $7 gyro off a steel cart towed in an hour earlier by a pickup truck. Street food — albeit a savvy, sophisticated version created by two guys who conjured the idea between their shifts cooking at white-tablecloth restaurants from Vail to Massachusetts.

"This was kind of a pipe dream," Winston said as spiffily dressed customers came and went. "We'd always talked about the idea of street food made from scratch with high-quality

Elizabeth Trujillo buys a cupcake from Denver Cupcake Truck owner Sean Moore on 16th Street. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)ingredients."

So in October, with a mobile kitchen boasting a steam table and flat-top grill, plus a 90-gallon Coleman cooler for food buckets and sauces, Jones and Winston launched The Gastro Cart at 18th and Curtis streets.

They are part of a new generation of lunchtime line cooks, many with fine-dining roots, changing the way Denverites view street food.

Some use carts at fixed locations. Others roam the city in tricked-out food trucks, employing electronic social media such as Facebook to announce their location du jour. (Comida, operated by Rayme Rossello, former co-owner of Proto's Pizza, uses Twitter and its website to alert fans to a knockout Mexican menu ranging from carnitas to camarones, dispensed around Boulder County from a bright-pink van.)

The purveyors are finding that if you cook it, they — usually customers from surrounding shops and offices — will come. Especially if you infuse the food with flair and flavor.

David Bravdica has made that happy discovery at Brava! Pizzeria Della Strada, the wagon-style pizza oven he has run since April 30 at 16th and Arapahoe streets.

Each weekday, the three-man operation turns out about 75 10-inch pizzas at $5-$6 a pop.

Owner Sean Moore posts an online update of his Denver Cupcake Truck's location from the University of Denver campus last week. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)Bravdica uses Colorado ingredients, such as local cremini mushrooms, in-state pork for the sausage and cheese from Buena Vista.

"The overhead is nothing," he said. "This is street food."

Bravdica, 39, spent a number of years in the aviation industry before going to culinary school. He spent nine months in Italy learning winemaking, but also a thing or two about turning out hand-crafted pizzas baked in a 750-degree, oak-fired oven.

"I've always been into cooking, and this is a great way to do it," Bravdica said. "I'd done some catering with Lannie Garrett's Clocktower Cabaret (housed in the adjacent D&F Tower) and she and I cut a deal about the space. It's simple. I show up about 11 a.m. and stay until about 2:30

The Denver Cupcake Truck parked at California Street and the 16th Street Mall on Thursday, May 26, 2010. The cupcakes are baked at Cake Crumbs. 2216 Kearney Street. Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)p.m.

"I'm thinking about staying open longer," he said. "Business is good."

A food truck or cart is an appealing economic model. You don't have the startup costs of a full-blown restaurant. And while you'll never have the income stream of a room that serves alcohol, neither will you be paying for a liquor license that costs as much as the down payment on a house.

The concept took off in other cities before arriving here. Portland, Ore., is awash in food trucks. In Los Angeles, Roy Choi and his mobile Kogi BBQ stand have earned raves. Food & Wine magazine recently named Choi a "Best New Chef" for 2010, the first food-truck chef so honored.

Not that selling street food is as simple as setting up an Easy-Bake

Whitney George bites into a pistachio cupcake next to the truck on the 16th Street Mall. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)Oven.

Winston and Jones reckon they paid $800 or $900 for health and space permits for the Gastro Cart. The cart itself cost $10,000. A truck with a full-blown kitchen runs more than $50,000.