Enter the Ninja: Yatta-! Truck
The Yatta-! Truck, which serves sushi with an American twist, has been on the road since June 5. I stopped by this past Friday on Miracle Mile. The menu offers several unique rolls, including the All-American, a deep-fried cheeseburger roll. It also gives you the option of building your own sushi, which you do by using the brightly colored popsicle sticks sitting in cups on the side of the truck. You pick the sticks corresponding to the ingredients you'd like in and on your roll, and then you hand them to the folks at the truck's order window. "You be the Chef!" is the Yatta-! Truck's tag line.
I'm not quite confident in my ability to design my own roll without accidentally picking flavor combos that will turn out to be unexpectedly gross, so instead I chose one of the five pre-designed rolls on the menu: the Cream Cheese Explosion, a deep-fried cream cheese and spicy tuna roll. It was $3.50 for four pieces. The cream cheese and spicy tuna was a great combination - the cream cheese tempered the tuna's spice. My only complaint: deep-frying the roll cooked the tuna a little too much for my liking. I'd have preferred a greater contrast between the crunchy, hot batter on the outside and the cold, tender tuna inside the roll. I don't know if that's asking too much, culinarily speaking, but hey, if Acapulco can make deep-fried ice cream... (Yes, I'm talking about Acapulco, the Michelin 3-star restaurant that has introduced Southern California to such gustatory delights as the Mucho Macho-tizer Platter. Stop looking at me like that.)
This truck comes complete with a ninja. Yes, a masked, sword-wielding ninja who will obligingly strike badass poses if you ask to take a picture of him. Despite his garb, he's not fierce at all; in fact, he's very sweet and friendly. We shot the shit while I waited for my order to come up, and he told me the Yatta-! Truck has two regular spots: where we were currently standing, at 5900 Wilshire Blvd; and 2nd and Santa Monica Blvd, in the city of Santa Monica. It also hits downtown and Venice fairly often. Look for its latest stops here. In addition to tasty sushi, the Yatta-! Truck gave me the opportunity to say a sentence I may never again utter in my lifetime: "Hang on; I gotta say goodbye to the ninja."
Photos by Oliver Seldman
Chef Brian’s Comfort Truck
Too bad you can't copyright sliders. The mini-burger trend that's been sweeping the nation must annoy the White Castle people no end, since they're the ones that popularized the greasy little things to begin with, and they're not seeing any extra bank from the recent proliferation of petite meat patties. Tiny burgers have become a staple on gourmet food truck menus: they're quick to make, convenient to eat, and not half as messy as a regular-size burger. It's also easy to put all kinds of gourmet spins on them. Chef Brian's Comfort Truck does just that, offering seven varieties of slider - six chicken and one beef.
I got the jerk beef sliders (two for $4). They came on sweet, doughy buns reminiscent of the ones from King's Hawaiian, and each was topped with a slice of pineapple. The meat had an authentic jerk flavor, and it was spicy, without being so hot that it blew my head off. The beef was medium-well done - just how I like it. That's one of the reasons I've become a slider convert: it's hard to undercook a miniature patty, whereas people often tend to undercook regular-size burgers, because they like rare meat. I'm a fan of more well-done meat (do I hear snickers from the peanut gallery?).
My husband got the BBQ chicken sliders (also two for $4). They weren't quite what either of us expected - the menu's description of the sliders didn't mention that they were battered. Looking back, the words "deep-fried" on the menu should have tipped us off: most deep-fried chicken has a layer of breading on it, helping keep the meat inside juicy. Our initial confusion didn't change the fact that the sliders were very tasty; the barbecue sauce had a good balance of acid and smoke flavors.
Next: Chef Brian's Golden Fried "Crack" Tortilla Chips ($2). Holy crap, these were good. I found myself hoping my 2-year-old son wouldn't eat too many of them, so I could have more. (No such luck - he loved them as much as I did.) They're flour tortilla chips that taste like they came from heaven. They're buttery and flaky and there are far too few of them in each serving.
A week or so later, I hit up the Comfort Truck for the second time. They were on Melrose and Spaulding, and they'd tweeted that they were giving out free jerk beef sliders and Comfy Jerk Beef Wraps (usually $3) to their first 30 customers. I came by and grabbed my freebies, plus an extra order of crack chips and a soda. The sliders were just as good as I remembered them, and Brian and Nikki were lots of fun to chat with.
Several brick-and-mortar burger joints have deployed mobile divisions: I even saw a Fatburger truck at Silverlake Jubilee today. Maybe White Castle will start its own food truck. With the huge amount of competition out there now, the original kings of the slider might want to show these upstart burger-slingers where it all began. Still, there's plenty of room in this world (and in my stomach) for both a classic White Castle burger and a jerk-spiced, pineapple-topped beef patty. Vive la différence.
Photos by Oliver Seldman
Even Quicker-Fire Review: Worldfare
What's Its Deal?: Worldfare's repurposed double-decker bus is sort of like the mullet of food trucks, except that here, the business is down below, and the party's up top. You order your meal at the side window, where you can look into the bottom-deck kitchen; when your food's up, you climb the stairs to the top deck, where there's a counter you can eat at.
What Do They Have?: Bunny Chow ($4), a South African street food. It's a hollowed-out bread roll filled with short rib stew, BBQ pork, chicken curry or veggie chili.
Is It Good?: Yes, but pricey. Two Bunny Chows (short rib and BBQ pork) and truffle mac and cheese balls ($11 for the combo), a lychee lemongrass mint drink ($2.50), and a 8-ounce Piedmontese World Fare burger with fries ($10) set us back more than $20. I enjoyed the Bunny Chows so much that I can't wait to hit up World Fare again. Here's the problem, though: they're tiny. The truck displays a picture of three Bunny Chows in a row, which led me to believe that $4 would buy me three of them. Nope; just one. The truffle mac and cheese balls didn't blow my mind, but they were still tasty. Ditto on the burger and fries. The drink was sweet, tart and refreshing - I'd definitely get it again.
Anything Bad?: Yep. Why are there not tables and chairs on the top deck? They won't slide around if you bolt 'em down. If I want to stand and eat, I can do that outside on the street.
Quickfire Review: Lomo Arigato
Recently I've been hitting the food trucks hard, so hard in fact that I have a backlog of reviews to do. Rather than do up a full review of each truck, I thought I'd experiment with a quickfire review format. This is the last in a series of five mini-reviews.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Truck: Lomo Arigato
What I ordered: Lomo saltado (beef stew with french fries; $7)
Was it good?: Like Frysmith's chili fries, these fries soaked up the juices of the beef stew in which they swam, and were all the tastier for it. The beef was melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the onions were plentiful (and you know I love me some onions). There was white rice on the side, but I'm not big into plain white rice: I see it as a chunk of calories I'd rather spend on something with a bit more flavor.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Overall experience: The dudes at Lomo Arigato don't go the extra mile for their customers. That's a compliment, not a criticism: read on for an explanation. See, right before my husband and I arrived at Mid-Wilshire, the parking goons had shown up and demanded the Lomo guys move their truck. We walked up a minute later to find the truck with doors down, and the chefs standing on the street talking. "We asked if we could just move the truck into a space down the street," one of the guys told us, "but they said, 'No, it has to be a mile away.'" We all agreed that this sounded dodgy, and that because the goons really had no good reason to move the trucks along, they were now just inventing random parking laws. Still, the Lomo guys weren't going to protest right now; they wanted to keep serving lunch. "We'll open back up real quick before we move, though, just for you guys," chef/owner Eric Nakata said, and he pulled up the doors and hopped back in the truck. How nice is that? We got our lomo saltado with a side of awesome customer service!
Vegetarian-friendly: You can get both the lomo saltado and the chaufa (fried rice; $7) with tofu. It's unclear whether they do the tallarin (Peruvian spaghetti; $7) with tofu as well - I'll ask, and add a note here when I know.
Vegan-friendly: The lomo with tofu is vegan; the chaufa has egg, so it's not. The tallarin is vegan if you can get tofu on it.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Quickfire Review: Frysmith
Recently I've been hitting the food trucks hard, so hard in fact that I have a backlog of reviews to do. Rather than do up a full review of each truck, I thought I'd experiment with a quickfire review format. This is the fourth in a series of five mini-reviews.
Truck: Frysmith
What I ordered: Chili cheese fries ($5)
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Was it good?: Made with beer and chocolate, the chili was some of the best I've had in a long while, on top of fries that got soggier and more starchily delicious as they soaked up their topping. Capping it off were lashings of grated cheddar cheese. I ate it with a fork, and got it all over my face, and I loved every minute of it. Plus, it didn't give me a stomachache, despite my having eaten it as my first meal of the day, and despite it being filled with fatty, greasy cholesterol-y insanity. I'd already decided it was OK by me to suffer a little for some chili cheese fries, and now I'd had all the fun without the punishment. Magical. They didn't have their famous kimchi fries ($6) the day I went, but next time I'm going to get them.
Overall experience: Brook Howell and Erik Cho, the owners and operators of Frysmith, were very friendly and welcoming. We talked about the look of the truck: they achieved that brushed-metal finish themselves, with gallons of paint stripper and a sander. Running a fry-centric truck means customizing its kitchen. Whereas most food trucks have a standard kitchen with one small deep-fryer, Frysmith has four large fryers in a row, with a big window so customers can see the action taking place. The guy who built their truck installed Plexiglas: an error, it turned out, because as soon as the fryers fired up, the window got so hot it started to warp. Real glass is going in soon, Brook says.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Vegetarian-friendly: They have vegan chili fries ($4.50), with organic tomato, mixed beans, soy chorizo and smoked paprika. You can get them with cheese...
Vegan-friendly: ...or without cheese. I know it doesn't seem like much of an option, but it's important to remember that often with these trucks, there are only a few items on their menus, so what looks like slim pickings for vegetarians/vegans actually makes up a sizable chunk of the menu.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Quickfire Review: Dogtown Dogs
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Recently I've been hitting the food trucks hard, so hard in fact that I have a backlog of reviews to do. Rather than do up a full review of each truck, I thought I'd experiment with a quickfire review format. This is the third in a series of five mini-reviews.
Truck: Dogtown Dogs
What I ordered: Trailer Trash dog (all beef, topped with chili and crumbled Fritos; $6); Dogtown Dog (all beef, with fennel slaw, dijon mustard and roasted red peppers; $5)
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Was it good?: The dog itself was very tasty. The Fritos could have been a bit more plentiful on the Trailer Trash dog, but the chili was hearty and rich. The Dogtown Dog's fennel slaw didn't do it for me. It was too thickly cut, there was slightly too much of it on the dog, and the fennel itself was a little flavorless.
Overall experience: The dude who took our order was happy to chat with us. He sounded like he had a little bit of a Boston accent, which I absolutely love. He gave us the lowdown on "snap dogs": they've got a natural sausage casing, so they have a nice snap to them when you take a bite. The problem? These dogs are expensive. Yes, they're pretty good, but to be honest, I'd like them a lot more if they cost a couple dollars less.
Vegetarian-friendly: The portabello cheese steak dog ($7) has grilled portabello mushrooms, peppers and onions. It's topped with melted cheese. You can also make any dog soy for $1 extra.
Vegan-friendly: Get a soy dog on the Dogtown Dog or California Dog ($6). You could ask for the portabello dog sans cheese. I have a message in to the Dogtown boys asking them about the vegan status of their hot dog buns, and I'll report back when I hear from them.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Quickfire Review: Komodo
Recently I've been hitting the food trucks hard, so hard in fact that I have a backlog of reviews to do. Rather than do up a full review of each truck, I thought I'd experiment with a quickfire review format. This is the second in a series of five mini-reviews.
Truck: Komodo
Photo by Oliver Seldman
What I ordered: Meatballs with Romesco sauce ($5); fish and grapes taco ($2); asian marinated chicken taco ($2); Komodo signature taco ($3).
Was it good?: I'd read rave reviews of the fish and grapes taco. It was very good, but it didn't knock my socks off. The fish was nice and light, but I'd have liked a bit more punch to its flavor, to contrast with the acid and the sweetness of the grapes. Maybe whole grapes, rather than the halved ones in the taco, would have given a crunch to the dish. The meatballs were full of sausagey awesomeness, and got spicier the more I ate, till I was sweating slightly. The orange Romesco sauce drizzled on top of them was nutty and garlicky. My 22-month-old son Owen decided to dip his sneaker in it and then wipe it on me. The marinated chicken came with little orange segments, and the Komodo signature taco had delicious meat.
Overall experience: Good stuff.
Vegetarian-friendly: No main dishes are, unfortunately. Truffle fries and garlic fries are meat-free. The guacamole rolls (wonton-wrapped guacamole sprinkled with Old Bay herb seasoning; $5) are also vegetarian.
Vegan-friendly: Truffle fries are; garlic fries are topped with parmesan, so ask for no parm if you're vegan. The guacamole rolls are vegan as well as vegetarian.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Quickfire Review: The Gastrobus
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Recently I've been hitting the food trucks hard, so hard in fact that I have a backlog of reviews to do. Rather than do up a full review of each truck, I thought I'd experiment with a quickfire review format. This is the first in a series of 5 mini-reviews.
Truck: Gastrobus
What I ordered: Skirt steak sandwich with onion, tomato and chimichurri ($6); sweet potato fries with honey mustard dipping sauce ($2.50); potato soup; beet greens.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Was it good?: Hells yes. The steak was smoky and juicy. Honey mustard added a delicious tang to the mellowness of the fries, making the flavor multidimensional. I expected the soup to have a cream base, but it tasted like it was made with chicken or vegetable broth instead: it was interesting to eat a potato soup that was so light. The beet greens tasted like chard; they were very tender, and their crunchy stems were a beautiful shade of hot pink.
Overall experience: On a hot day outside MySpace, the line wasn't long at all, and the food came out fast.
Photo by Oliver Seldman
Vegetarian-friendly: There's a veggie sandwich on the menu featuring yams, zucchini and balsamic onions ($6). Also, check their daily specials when you visit the truck.
Vegan-friendly: The veggie sandwich is good for vegans too.
Review: Louks To Go
One lunchtime when I was knee-deep in work, my husband decided to hit the food trucks on Miracle Mile and bring home some good stuff. He came back with a beef gyro ($5) from Louks To Go. I was blown away, and since then I've been waiting for another opportunity to visit this Greek street food truck.
This go-round, I decided to get the chicken gyro ($5). Like the beef, it comes with tzatziki, tomato, onion, and - the magic ingredient - FRIES, wrapped up inside the pita. You'd think fries and pita together might equal too much starch in one dish. That may be true in terms of nutritional balance, but not when it comes to flavor and texture: the oil in the fries and the grilled pita, plus the softness of both pita and potato, went perfectly together. Louks' pita bread is the best I have ever eaten.
My food truck adventures have made me a big fan of the well-applied onion, and this gyro did not disappoint. The onions were a great crunchy counterpart to the tender meat. The chicken was sliced very thin, and it was extra juicy and lean. My husband got the beef gyro again. I took as many bites of it as I could get away with.
My esteemed dining companion got the veggie gyro, which comes with cucumber, tomato, lettuce, tzatziki, feta, fries and onion. They'd run out of regular feta, and though she asked for spicy feta on her gyro, it was sadly nowhere to be found. They'd also run out of lettuce. She wished her gyro had had the creamy and crunchy textures of the feta and lettuce, but she liked it pretty well as it was. It did have a touch too much onion, she thought.
What you see above are loukomades, from which Louks takes its name. They're Greek donuts, dusted with powdered sugar, with a big dollop of strawberry jam on top. You can also get them with Nutella or honey. They're slightly crispy on the outside and syrupy on the inside; their melt-in-your-mouth texture reminds me of jalebi, deep-fried Indian sweets made from batter and syrup.
Never again shall I visit Greek fast-food joints like Daphne's now that I have discovered Louks! To be fair, Daphne's is pretty good, but Louks' pita haunts my dreams. For that reason alone, I am willing to forgo the convenience of a brick-and-mortar location at the West Hollywood Gateway, and choose to chase a truck around instead. Next time I'm going to try the honey feta fries ($3).
Vegetarian-friendly? Yes, but not a lot: there's the aforementioned veggie gyro, as well as a Greek salad and feta fries.
Vegan-friendly? Not so much: there's feta and/or tzatziki on everything except the loukomades.
Review: LA Street Food Fest
The LA Street Food Fest kicked off Saturday at downtown's LA Center Studios. An insanely large crowd showed up. At 11:30, the line for general admission ($5) stretched for blocks, and at times during the Fest, the wait for entry was two hours long. VIP ticket holders paid $30 for guaranteed entry to the festival, a private bar, access to indoor bathrooms, a spot on the upstairs VIP patio (where I hear there were donuts and dim sum!), and a goodie bag (which they ran out of by 3:30 PM, sadly). Their line to get in was also much shorter - a perk well worth the ticket price.
Festival staff handed out maps as we entered. They also functioned as punch cards: if you ate at six trucks or stalls and had each one punch your card, you could then turn it in and enter a Citysearch LA giveaway featuring prizes like cooking lessons, hotel stays, and dinner for two at restaurants including Grub, sugarFISH and Rush Street. Inside the studio grounds, the main drag was lined with trucks and food stalls. Lines were long almost everywhere. In true street-food style, people perched on flights of stairs, curbs, and low cement walls to eat their hard-won truck noms. Others ate as they wandered among the stalls at the mini arts/crafts marketplace.
Most of the trucks had tasting menus specially for the Fest, with smaller plates from $1-$5. I took the opportunity to visit three trucks I hadn't tried before. First up: Piaggio On Wheels. I ordered three chicken empanadas, at a dollar each; one for me, one for my husband and one for my son. They were piping hot, and full of cubed chicken, onions and peppers. I'm not a big fan of cooked peppers, but these added a sweetness and tanginess to the empanadas, and I didn't notice the slimy texture that normally turns me off them. The pastry was soft and chewy rather than flaky and crispy - when it comes to empanadas, I prefer the former, so I was very happy.
Next up was a spicy tuna roll from Fishlips Sushi. It came in four cut pieces, with tiny servings of wasabi, ginger and soy sauce. Fishlips doesn't use mayo in its spicy tuna rolls - as a result, the hot sauce is less creamy and the roll is a little drier overall, plus the spice seems more intense. It was still pretty f-ing good, and only cost me $3.
For dessert, I hit up The Sweets Truck. I got a mini cupcake ($2), intending to give it to my son. He fell asleep in the car on the way home, so I took one for the team and ate it myself. Aren't I a selfless mom? It was yellow cake with chocolate frosting. The cake was moist, and the frosting was rich. Unlike other people, I don't love a ton of frosting on my cupcakes (I know that sounds dirty), and this little cupcake had just the right amount for me. I also got a Crack Bar, aka a chocolate fudge cookie bar ($3). My husband identified the crumbled cookies on top of the bar as Famous Chocolate Wafers, which are a key ingredient in the much-loved dessert known as icebox cake. The rest of the bar was just as good - melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cookie gave way to a thick fudge filling. My favorite sweet from the Sweets Truck, however, was the cupcake and pudding shooter ($3). It came in a miniature cup with a spoon, and featured alternating layers of cake and pudding. I got the lemon cake and cheesecake variety. I wished it came in a bucket instead of a little cup.
It took a bit of strategizing to deal with the crowds and the plethora of food options. The LA Times interviewed a group of friends who'd beaten the lines by splitting up, waiting in different truck lines and ordering extra food for one another. Since there were two-hour wait times at some trucks (the much-anticipated LudoBites fried chicken truck, for example), this idea was a good one.
The turnout was so enormous that lots of people didn't get into the festival at all. A commenter on Eating LA suggested that a truck walk, like downtown LA's Art Walk, might be a better format: holding the Fest inside a gated area meant everyone spent even more time waiting in line. It was also the first hot day in a couple of months, and queuers were getting sunburned and thirsty as well as hungry. Some non-Fest-attending food trucks showed up and parked by the line to get into the Fest. Great business initiative!
After yesterday's event, Fest organizers Shawna Dawson and Sonja Rasula tweeted that they were "heartbroken" to have to turn people away, and that they'd be "back... better... soon!" No word yet on whether this'll be an annual festival, or an event that pops up in different locations from time to time. Once the initial kinks are ironed out, the Fest should be a satisfying experience for everyone.