Artisan coffee from a truck

The food trucks that stretch along 38th Street near the western edge of Penn's campus provide an antidote to - no, make that a repudiation of - the sad-sack food-court fare that lurks in greasy shame just blocks to the east.

Between Chestnut and Spruce Streets you will encounter, in no particular order, trucks offering soba noodles and bright, fresh-made chicken tacos, a deal at $2 apiece - un-Taco Bell tacos.

There are speed bumps of baba ganoush (and feta) and Yue Kee's celebrated - long-lined - Chinese window besting a fair number of Chinatown's own lunch spots, and cheerily advertising proprietarily spelled ma paul tofu.

And so on. A Queen of Steaks. The House of Pita. Bui's repertoire of egg sandwiches, judged to be the finest on wheels by one particularly enthusiastic regular.

Missing from this aluminum smorgasbord, at least in the view of Drew (for "Andrew") Crockett, Penn '05, was an upscale coffee truck on the order of the ones he'd happily patronized working as a trader in New York's financial district.

So last week there it suddenly was, joining the old standbys in the shadow of the arching Locust Walk pedestrian overpass - Crockett's wish made whole . . . by his very own wand.

Have I noted that its name comes from one of his grandmother's favorite words, Hub Bub?

That it has instantly raised the food-truck bar, serving artisan French pastries - including an airy, icing-topped cinnamon roll - from Au Fournil, the estimable Narberth bakery?

That its list of brewed coffee and espresso drinks featuring a remarkably bright, earthy, jasmine-scented "Hair Bender Blend" are from beans roasted by Stumptown Coffee, the Portland, Ore., cult roaster that has opened a Brooklyn roastery, sharing the wealth, finally, with East Coast wannabe Stumptown junkies?

I've long been a devotee of La Colombe, the hometown Port Richmond roaster. But if La Colombe can hawk its beans out west in San Francisco (which it does), who's to snub Stumptown, two hours north?

The company boasts old-school, cast-iron German Probat roasting machines, and varietal beans it purchases, it says, at prices sometimes twice as high, or more, than even average fair-trade payments.