Ever since returning to Southern California, I've been intrigued by this relatively new concept known as the the "gourmet food truck." By now, most Southern Californians should have heard of the existence of a very popular gourmet food truck known as Kogi BBQ. Kogi BBQ started out in 2008/2009 and became extremely popular using Twitter. I suppose the food Kogi offers can be categorized as mainly Korean-Mexican fusion with its most popular dish being the Korean inspired tacos. Kogi's recipe for success has allowed them to expand to four trucks serving different areas of LA and Orange county on different days of the week. The type of food these gourmet trucks offer now range from desserts to comfort food. You can find Vietnamese inspired tacos, traditional American BBQ tacos, grilled cheese sandwiches and even ice cream sandwiches. With such a wide selection of food, the gourmet food trucks are viable alternative to the classic fast food chains.
I recently discovered this website which conveniently places the twitter feeds of quite a few gourmet trucks all in one place. I try to follow all of the ones that have menus that look good. So far I've tried a number of different gourmet trucks that offer some sort of "pork or beef taco" in order to have some common basis for comparison.
Re: Kogi
This is the first gourmet truck I tried. I waited an hour to try the pork, chicken and beef tacos. Honestly, the flavor wasn't what I expected it to be. The pork and beef had a nice spicy flavor to it. Unfortunately the spicy burn didn't last very long which was disappointing to me. At more traditional sit-down restaurants, the spicy burn tends to last longer. The pork and beef did have the traditional Korean BBQ sauce flavor that you find at the sit-down Korean BBQ restaurants. The tacos were also pretty dry which I didn't like that much. The sauce that they had wasn't enough in my opinion. At the end of the night, I didn't think the flavor was worth waiting an hour for.
I had the opportunity to try Kogi again. I ordered a pork and beef taco as well as a pork burrito. The tacos were definitely much juicier than I remembered. They still had the spiciness that I remembered but the meat tasted much better. The burrito was good. The juices soaked the tortilla that it became much too soggy to eat like a traditional burrito.
One night after work, I ventured to Sawtelle & Olympic to try out some of the ramen places that I found in a Yelp search. After dinner, I went walking around to see what were the other nearby restaurants and found the Nom Nom Truck.
Nom Nom Truck sells Vietnamese style tacos as well as Banh mi sandwiches. Not sure what to expect, I wandered up to the window and started chatting to the guy behind the counter. I remember asking him "Are you like Kogi" and he laughed. He explained that Nom Nom Truck is a food truck serving hungry Angelenos just like Kogi. Other than that, there were no other similarities to compare with. I ended up ordering a pork taco and he gave it to me free!
The pork taco wasn't spicy. In fact it was much drier than the Kogi ones. I remember that the meat didn't have a very strong flavor to it. It also didn't have any sauces in their meat. I did enjoy the pickles that they garnished on top of the taco though. I found the pickle to be much juicer than the pork itself. In the end, I gave them some free publicity through Facebook since I got a taco for free. I had the opportunity to try Nom Nom again. I ordered the same thing and was sorely disappointed. The taco was still as dry and bland as I had remembered it. I went and bought narazuke from a local Japanese grocery store. Adding the narazuke seem to make it taste even better. However, I like narazuke so I can't tell if the narazuke really added to the flavor or just my own personal preference of narazuke.
Despite the negatives of its tacos, Nom Nom truck was actually a critical find in the grand scheme of things. By monitoring their twitter feed on their website, I managed to find many other food trucks.
The ultimate discovery is this website. Its a twitter feed of the gourmet trucks that serve LA and Orange county. I've managed to check out each of the trucks website. and have tagged a few trucks that look interesting enough to try. The ones I've tried so far are listed below. Of course, these are all subjective. But I do encourage people to have an open mind and try all the trucks at least once.
Comfort food at its best! Its pretty much grilled cheese sandwiches. Their specials have a slight wrinkle in them but overall its pretty typical grilled cheese. I've only tried it once and I enjoyed it. I would like to try it again.
Re: Calbi
Probably the best Korean BBQ taco. I like the spicy sauce. It lingered for a pretty long time. The sauce also made the taco easy to eat. That's probably why I like their tacos the most. I would definitely try this again if I can.
Re: Border Grill
Not worth the money.
Re: Frysmith
If you love fries, I think you should try this truck out. I like fries but I didn't like the thin cut fries as much. There is only so much you can do with french fries.
Re: Komodo
Better than Border Grill. The tacos were just as dry as the Nom Nom truck.
Their roast pork belly taco tasted very similar to a Taiwanese style snack. Its basically roasted pork belly wrapped not in taco but in white flat bread thats been steamed. Since I love pork belly, I loved that particular "taco."
There's still a few trucks that I want to try -- Louks, Buttermilk, Babys BBQ, Barbies BBQ, BoolBBQ, SouthPhilly Experience, Coolhaus (Ice Cream Sandwich), Sweets Truck -- to mention a few. Now I just have to wait when they're "close enough" to drive to.
felix =^^=
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