The Little Piggy food truck hub opens May 1 on Southwest Boulevard

Elusive and coveted, morels are the World Series rings of the mushroom world. On a good day, a trek into the woods to search for the finicky fungus can result in burlap sacks filled with gourmet gold. But as an amateur, I’ve often headed home with nothing but an empty sack, multiple mosquito bites on my legs and a fear of ticks in my pants.

The Fungal Fusion food truck takes the work — and the insects and arachnids — out of enjoying these earthy, nutty morsels. Since February, Matt Trammell has driven around Kansas City with his mushroom-centric menu, which includes morel-loaded ’shrooms and fries.

“We hunt them ourselves, and we work with local pickers,” says Trammell, who operates a mushroom farm in Humansville, Missouri, where he grows multiple varieties, including oyster and shiitake. “We’ll have them all year. Right now we do fresh, local morels, but we use dehydrated as well.”

Much like foraging for morels, tracking down your favorite food truck on your lunch break can be taxing. That’s why Michael Foust, the executive chef at the Farmhouse, decided to create the Little Piggy food truck hub near Southwest Boulevard and Roanoke Road. The hub will be open daily for lunch and dinner starting May 1, giving people a regular spot to find their favorite mobile eats.

“The whole premise was to give food trucks a permanent location,” Foust says. “We wanted to have chef-driven trucks, and one of the key details was making sure everybody had their own little niche.”

Looking at the diverse lineup for the hub, it’s easy to see what Foust means. Fungal Fusion and the other trucks all specialize in unique items. Wilma’s brings the comfort food (think fried-mashed-potato balls and macaroni and cheese), Pie Hole serves Australian-style meat pies and El Tenedor KC makes Spanish-style tapas with locally grown ingredients.

The May 1 grand opening also marks the first appearance of Red Wattle, the Farmhouse’s new food truck, which is named after a breed of hog. In this case, the truck — a 1953 Spartan Aircraft trailer coach named Ethel — inspired Foust to take his cuisine on the road.

“I found it in a field in Rantoul, Kansas, which is near Paola,” Foust says of the first time he saw the shiny aluminum trailer. “I was coming back from one of our farms and saw it sitting in a field and decided it needed to be ours.”

While Red Wattle’s farm-to-table menu features vegetarian and vegan items, Foust says it focuses on “proteins” prepared using different techniques, such as full-animal roasting.

When we spoke, Foust had not yet finalized the menu, but photos on Red Wattle’s Facebook page show smoked-sirloin sandwiches drenched in caramelized onions, peppers and cheese sauce. The sandwich looks more decadent than I could dare to dream — and unlike those wild morels, I know where to find it.

The Little Piggy KC food truck hub at 3014 Southwest Boulevard opens Sunday, May 1, from noon to 5 p.m.