Elizabeth “Lizzie” Searing greets Teangeley Centeno ’28 (CLAS) and Juve Perez ’28 (ENG) as they walk up to the window of her stainless-steel food truck not by asking for their food order but by asking how their spring break in Puerto Rico went.
“It was great! But we missed your food,” Teangeley says.
The couple has been going to Lizzie’s Curbside every morning since their first visit their first year at UConn when they ordered The Mighty Mouth — a breakfast sandwich that layers bacon, ham, and sausage with egg and cheese.
“We discovered it freshman year, and we just started binge eating it, and then we just couldn’t stop,” Centeno says.
She and Perez have gotten to know proprietors Lizzie and her husband, Joie, well. Someday they hope to have Lizzie cater their wedding.
On this frosty day in mid-March following two massive snowstorms, the Searings have just returned to campus after their annual winter break in Hallandale Beach, Florida. Lizzie leans out the front window of her truck, taking orders in a black button-up chef’s shirt embroidered with “Lizzie.” Her hair in a messy ponytail, she moves around the truck quickly, talking to customers as she works. Her 6-year-old golden retriever, Melo, sits across the road on a grassy hill, luring customers for head scratches.
After some three decades parked on Whitney Road, construction forced temporary relocation last year to Fairfield Way. From her new spot near Hawley Armory, Lizzie greets customers, many by name.
“UConn is my home. It’s my family,” she says. “I know a lot of people, and I don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t here.”
This February marked 35 years of serving Husky Nation. Just 27 years old and a newlywed when she and Joie moved to the area, Lizzie began contemplating a suggestion from a former boss: Open a hot dog cart on the UConn campus — it will get a lot of business. That’s how she found herself in Storrs on February 1, 1991, shivering and serving hot dogs on the sidewalk by Mirror Lake. “I had my hot dog wagon, which had a steam table and a coffee urn, and that was it. I stood on the ground out in the elements, out in the cold,” she recalls.
From that $100 day, her business grew. “People found out about me by word of mouth. The menu was a lot more limited. I served coffee, soups, premade sandwiches, and had a cooler. … People would slowly come out of Monteith and Arjona and stop by, and they liked it,” Lizzie says.
