Skillet is a step up on local dining's evolutionary scale

People like shiny things.

That's part of the reason Josh Henderson and Danny Sizemore decided they wanted to run a restaurant out of an Airstream trailer. They also like the idea of a mobile lifestyle, opening the door for business each morning in a fresh location with new customers. Most of all, they like food. So the idea of really good food being served out of something big, mobile and shiny sounded absolutely brilliant.

When it launches August 22, Skillet will catch your eye in the vicinity of South Lake Union. If the shiny object attracting your attention also seems to be accompanied by a savory aroma wafting on the breeze, look for the telltale Skillet logo (a black cast-iron skillet) on the gleaming surface. Then get ready to have street food like you've never had it before.

Take bacon and eggs, for instance. Make that bacon a warm, tender slab of succulent pork belly braised in maple syrup, heaped onto a fresh waffle and topped with a fried egg, and you have Skillet's idea of breakfast. Or a Cobb salad: Add arugula, trade in the ham for pancetta, serve the egg poached rather than boiled and toss it with an avocado ranch dressing, and you're beginning to see what Henderson and Sizemore mean when they say that this is "evolved" cuisine.

"Restaurants have evolved immensely in the last 20 years," Henderson says, "but other facets, like street food, have not. We'd like to change that."

Heading out for your lunch break, snagging a bistro-style meal made from local, seasonal ingredients for under $10 and taking it back to the office in a biodegradable sugarcane box certainly sounds like a step up on the evolutionary scale.

Henderson, 34, acquired his taste for mobile food service as a chef for commercial photographers shooting on location, following them around in a trailer and feeding them. His culinary skills are a perfect complement to the management acumen brought by Sizemore, 30, who, as a kid, helped out at his dad's restaurant in a small town in Kentucky and now sells kitchen equipment to the food-service industry. His expertise made outfitting a 1962 Airstream Safari with a full commercial kitchen a piece of cake.

Skillet's first location – the mobile eatery can operate only with permission on private property – will be at 224 Westlake Ave. N., under the KIRO sign, in South Lake Union, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Where Henderson and Sizemore take their mobile restaurant after that remains to be seen – and may be up to you. If you invite them, they'll show up at your office parking lot or tailgate party.

Thankfully, tracking them down won't be a wild goose chase. A GPS locator attached to the trailer and linked to their Web site will let you know on any given day where the shiny beast roams. Look, that's it up there – straight ahead on the evolutionary path, right in front of that traffic jam of salivating drivers.