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Coconuts hot spot — Here’s another reason to visit Maginhawa: it now has its own food truck park called StrEat. As in StrEat: Maginhawa Food Truck Park.

“My mom, Kitty, and I were contemplating on how there aren’t enough parks in the area, except UP Diliman, which has rich flora,” says Cheska Del Castillo, who is a designer at an art gallery.

Four food trucks are parked adjacent to each other, at the front corners of the lot. They’re the only ones opened when we visited in early February.

In place of trees are huge umbrellas to keep diners and hanger-outers cool and shaded — a bit off-strat as StrEat doesn’t open until 5pm. But maybe the operating hours is such because the park is still on soft opening status.

It quietly opened on Jan 29 with the Food Truck Association of the Philippines. At the moment, the four food trucks opened are: Mio Gelati, Great Burgers and Mexicombi, which are all easy to tell what they serve. And Soul Food, the last food truck, which serves southern comfort food, like corn dogs, deep fried cheese, and country fried steak.

The four seemed enough. On the evening we were there, they attraced a steady flow of residents and students, who came for a quick dinner and couldn’t resist a short tambay after, never mind that there was still construction going on.

According to Cheska, the park, when completed, will be comprised of the four food trucks mentioned, plus seven brick-and-mortar stores, which are still being built to make it to the March 13 grand opening.

There’s The Lost Bread, specializing French toasts and milkshakes; Saucy Food, which is meat plus speciality sauces; Magpie Café is a Korean joint while Grape Escape will offer wine and delicatessen.

A few established eateries from around Metro Manila will come join StrEat like UP Diliman’s Endless Summer, which offers sizzling plates. Z compound’s Me Love You Long Time is also branching out here, and Bricks and Copper Turkish Cuisine, which is an export of Mandaluyong.

Says Cheska her vision for StrEat is for it to go beyond food. “I want the park to be a convergence point of pop culture in the community.” Which is not far from happening.

At StReat, hanging out feels like the absolute natural thing to do. As in, tambays won’t be able to resist the easy breezy park feel of StrEat. There’s awesome music from the ‘70s — Motown and the life! — coming from Soul food, which we pray doesn’t change.

You can bring your pets inside the park, as your bikes and skateboards. And because it’s open-air, we’re assuming smokers are very much welcome here, too. We feel sorry there aren’t enough trees, but we guess you really can’t have it all.

91 Maginhawa St, UP Teachers Village. 5pm-2am, Tue-Sun. Facebook.