Gourmet Food Trucks (18)

Re: Rebel Bite
So this particular truck is pretty new.  Of course I didn’t really know what they served.  The menu looked interesting... it was grilled cheese sandwiches but with a twist?  I don’t know what kind of twists you can add to the standard grilled cheese that the Grilled Cheese Truck hasn’t done yet.  I would be surprised if people don’t compare grilled cheese to the aforementioned Grilled Cheese Truck.  That truck seems to have a stranglehold on grilled cheese similar to how Kogi has with Korean BBQ tacos.

Anyways, Rebel Bite menu consists of the standard grilled cheese but you can add either pork, tuna or korean bbq pork.  They also offered a veggie option with eggplant.  As usual, I always seem to forget my camera when eating new trucks.  I had their pork grilled cheese.  The cheese wasn’t very gooey.  The pork WAS NOT pulled pork.  I’m not sure if it was because it was a cold day, but the sandwich wasn’t as hot as I think it should have been.  I think I was most disappointed with the pork.  The pork tasted similar to the kind of pork you get at Trader Joe’s.  It was chopped up into small bits so when I bit into the grilled cheese, I had some bites with pork and other bites without.  There was no consistency in pork flavor from bite to bite.  

The chili was a different story.  The mini-cup of chili was probably THE BEST THING I had.  It would be awesome if they can some how incorporate a “grilled chili cheese” sandwich with the chili they use.  Wouldn’t that be almost like a sloppy joe?  

There’s another grilled cheese truck rolling around somewhere.  I need to find it.

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Re: Bollywood Bites
Indian curry truck.  I tried this truck on my normal Wed. lunch outings with a coworker.  I got the combo which included two curries (chicken tikka masala and channa masala), naan and rice.  The chicken tikka masala was exceptionally good.  The channa masala (chick pea) wasn’t as good.  For some reason despite being the same curry sauce base, the channa masala was alot soupier than the tikka masala.  What’s even more horrible was that the chickpeas weren’t mushy like some of the previous channa masala’s that I’ve had (Shalimar in San Francisco).  I was really disappointed in that particular curry.  The chicken tikka masala had a good spice to it.  It was rich and clumped up the rice very well.  I think they can make a better curry.  They didn’t offer any lamb curry or beef curry.  

Gourmet Food Trucks (17)

Re: OG Tempura

Tempura especially shrimp tempura is very hit or miss.  The shrimp has to be well cooked and the coating has to be light and fluffy to be really considered good.  I ordered their shrimp tempura as well as their fish and chips.  

The fish and chips were pretty good.  The sweet potato fries that came with it was pretty good.  It would be nice if there were some unique sauce that accompanied the fries to make the dish stand out as “unique”.  The fish was cooked well with the tempura batter.  Overall it was good enough to try again.

The shrimp tempura was another story.  Each piece had a semi-raw shrimp consistency.  I tossed it away.  In retrospect I should have demanded they they recook it.  I might try it again in the future to see if it improved.

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Re: Grill em All

The winner of the first Food Network Food Truck Race apparently makes just burgers.  Their massive “The Behemoth” was something that they recommended.  However, I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the description of the burger.  I asked to replace the grilled cheese “buns” with just normal burger buns to at least make it a burger.  Oddly enough, this burger didn’t have anything special that made it unlike all the other gourmet burger joints.  Their menu had very odd combinations flavors as well -- peanut butter, jelly and siracha?  Siracha is that spicy vietnamese red paste that some people squeeze onto their dishes.

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Re: Bower’s Gourmet Sausages

This is a very new truck that sells gourmet sausages.  According to Yelp they’ve been around for awhile but looks like they recently expanded into the food truck business.  They recommended “The Chubby” which was a bacon wrapped hot dog.  I didn’t think it would be anything special from such a common combination of two items.  But wow... I was wrong.  The first thing that struck me was the size of the hot dog.  Its probably 2-3 times larger than the ones you can get at the grocery.  Not only that it was very juicy.  I can’t imagine what their other flavors will be like.  Not only that, their bun had this cheese crust grilled on it.  That cheese crust made the hot dog taste even better.  They had other creations like a burrito and a hamburger that are also made from sausages.  I can’t imagine how that will look like.

Santa Anita Food Truck Festival II

Santa Anita Food Truck Festival II

So the first one was an utter failure.  Even the event coordinators recognized that and apologized to everyone on their email list when they organized this second one.  They totally oversold the event and had over 25000 people in attendance.  They didn’t have enough trucks.  Pretty much they did everything wrong from the customer experience side of things.

The only thing they did right was to apologize and try to make things right.

They initial list of 80 food trucks didn’t all come together.  They still had 80 trucks and of those 80, I had only 48 of them.  Of the other 32 trucks, I had probably only heard of 9 of them.  Of these 9 trucks, I really wanted to try the White Rabbit Truck.  They mainly stay in San Fernando Valley with occasional forays into Westwood.  Since they were going to show up, I had to try them.  

Re: White Rabbit Truck

I had their three taco combo of pork sisig, pork tocino and chicken adobo.  One of the pork tacos was good.  There was one taco that was really good.  I think it was the pork tocino.  I like the flavor since it was pretty unique.  I would like to try their burrito one of these days if they come around close enough.

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Re: Yummy One
The beef and pork tacos from this truck were actually pretty good.  They used the gochujang sauce as topping (instead of cabbage, lettuce, etc).  I think the use of the sauce was why I enjoyed this taco the most.  They did offer other more traditional Korean dishes like bimbimbap.  That would be interesting to try one day.

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Gourmet Food Trucks (16)

Re: Onolicious BBQ

Its not related to the brick and mortar Ono Hawaiian BBQ.  I asked just in case they were.  They were at that new Westside Food Truck lot one night.  I had their Kalua Pork taco and some breaded + fried chicken taco.  Both tacos were topped with a siracha cabbage topping.  I didn’t particular like the cabbage topping.  The spicy siracha sauce tended to overpower the meat.  The pork taco was really juicy.  I liked the spices as well.  The chicken taco was also pretty good.  The chicken reminded me of the popcorn chicken that you get from those boba milk tea places.  I’ll try to get some pictures.

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Re: Vesuvio

Vesuvio is an Italian food truck.  They were near my workplace for lunch one day and I decided to try them out.  They serve quite a lot of classic Italian dishes.  They had a pretty good selection of pasta.  A coworker tried their ravioli and enjoyed it.  She liked the Marinara sauce especially.  I had the Chicken Caprese sandwich.  The pesto sauce was really delicious.  The ciabatta  bread was really good.  Too bad it couldn’t hold the sandwich together.  I ended up eating the chicken and bread separately.  I also had their “rice balls” as part of the sandwich combo.  Judging from the menu they are called Arancinis.  These rice balls were almost risotto like!  The rice had the consistency of risotto somewhat.  These rice balls were good.  I think it would have tasted even better had they used pancetta. I would definitely try this truck again.

Gourmet Food Trucks (15)

Re: India Jones Truck

This is a bright yellow truck serves Indian food.  They wrap seasoned meats in a roti called Frankie.  Its similar to a burrito.  They also have another dish called Paratha.  The people described it as a “Quesadilla without the cheese”.  Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures since I don’t normally carry around my camera.

I tried both the Frankie and the Paratha.  The Frankie was stuffed with lamb.  It was pretty decent.  I personally think that it could be a bit spicier as I always viewed Indian curry to be spicy.  The Paratha had minced beef which tasted a little wierd.  This also needed to be spicier.  I’ll take pictures next time.

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Re:  Go Country

This is what happens when an established radio station decides to go out into the food truck business.  They serve Tex-Mex, Country and Southern food.  Although I don’t quite know the distinction between Country and Southern food, Tex-Mex I can figure out.  As they were at this relatively new Food Truck Lot at Washington and Overland with my favorite food truck.  I tried their hot wings.  It was decent.  I wasn’t really overly impressed since it honestly tasted similar to something you’d get at Hooters or at the Wings Over in Brookline.

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Re: Barbie’s Q

Another food truck at the previously mentioned Food Truck Lot, I had tried a sandwich once before in the past (see Gourmet Food Trucks (3)).  I didn’t remember what I had ordered back then (apparently the BBQ pulled pork) so I ordered the BBQ pulled pork.  The pork this time was pretty good.  The pork wasn’t drenched in BBQ sauce so I was able to taste the slow cooked pork flavor.  I actually enjoyed the sandwich.  The BBQ sauce however still lacks something that to make it really good.

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Re: No Reservations Catering

The addictive garlic fries are not supplanted with the equally addictive “Heaven’s Gate” grilled cheese.  Their desserts are good too.