Los Angeles = Food Truck Capital of the world

There has been a huge food truck epidemic in LA. There is a new food truck grand opening every other week. It makes me think about all those business classes I took studying when to enter an industry. Should you be the first or the last? The innovator or the follower? Who will make the biggest bang? We’ll see in the next year or so who is still around. The first thought that crosses my mind when I think of food truck/cart/vendor, essentially street food is cheap eats, but these LA food trucks don’t come cheap. They are not like those $2 hot dogs and knishes in NYC. Sometimes it’s worth whipping out the big bills in your wallet, and some are not even worth a George Washington. Here’s why…




I picked Dina up from the LAX and went straight to the Brigg in Venice to show off our “LA food trucks” to the crazy new yorker who loves Halal carts and the famous dessert truck. Kogi wasn’t there and she was quite dissapointed. We had to make due with the others there that night. For me this was great, I was excited to try new food trucks.

Frysmith

It was Frysmith’s grand opening and we got a red balloon as a parting gift. Frysmith has a selection of fries topped with scrumptious ethnic soul foods. They were actually closing up, but were nice enough to keep the grill going and serve us some food. We were starved so we picked the Rajas Fries because it had steak on top of it. As Rachel would say, it was YUM-O. And that’s saying a lot since there was cilantro all mixed in which is my least favorite herb. The portion is ginormous. Between the two of us, we ate 1/5th of it. But we were also saving our stomach for more delicious trucks. Next time I’m going to try the kimchi fries and the chicken sweet potato! Thank you Frysmith! I will definitely be looking for you again.

Flying Pig


I was SO excited, jumping for joy, yelling my yippees when I saw that they had a pork bun on the menu! Just like momofuku, my all time must eat when I venture off to NYC. We ordered one pork bun and one pork taco. We had to get a taco since Kogi wasn’t there. My review…I’m so sorry Flying Pig with your cute pink truck, but N-A-S-T-Y! I can’t not think of a better word to describe it! I SPIT IT OUT. BOTH of them. Need I say more? The hoison sauce on the pork bun was really potent. It was like I was pouring imitation hoison sauce in my mouth. I can’t even remember what the taco tasted like. I may give them another try one of these days. Maybe they had a bad night. Maybe the person cooking just got in a fight with their spouse. I hope this was only a one time incident of having to spit out my food.

Get Shaved


After spitting out Flying Pig, we turned the corner and OH MY! SHAVE ICE! AND you can add the azuki beans AND the ice cream. AND they even had the snowcap! I was so excited. I wanted to be back in Hawaii again. I told Dina we HAD to get one even if we didn’t want to eat it, which we didn’t. We were disappointed. The snow cap (condensed milk) tasted a little off. It was either not sweet enough or too sweet. Something was just different about it. The fruit flavored syrups were too sweet and artificial tasting. I took one bite while in Venice. Then I carried it all the way home because I just couldn’t let go of the thought of shave ice. It ended up sitting in my sink overnight and then into the garbage. Very disappointed. VERY. There were many people around the truck enjoying their shave ice though. I could think it’s just me, but both of us did not enjoy it. It also irked me a tad bit that they call it shaved ice and not shave ice.

In the end, Frysmith was our only great find that night. One out of three is not bad. There are still so many trucks to hunt down! Here’s my list:




Nom Nom truck

Vietnemese Banhmi

Because anything on good French bread is worth eating



Buttermilk Truck

Breakfast

Because I love breakfast and biscuits



Marked5

Japanese Burgers

I want to know what meat on rice crackers tastes like. And it was one of the first trucks like Kogi.



Fish Lips

Sushi

Because I need to find out how sushi can be served from a truck



Asian Soul Kitchen Truck

I don’t so much want the food, but I want to see how they serve it. It looks like restaurant food from the website



The Sweets Truck

Desserts

I don’t care to look for this truck, but I want to do it in memory of SS and HY for their unfathomable love of this stuff



In San Francisco:

Waffle Mania Truck

Crème Brulee Cart



In NYC:

Chicken and rice: Can you believe out of all those crazy nights in NYC, I never went to the chicken and rice man? I was so obsessed with Grey’s Papaya I couldn’t go to the dirty man!

Pommes Frittes: And everytime I was in the village and would say I want pommes frittes, I would pick falafels instead.



So after having all those with dina, dosa truck with susan, and kogi multiple times…my favorites, in this order, are…



DC’s Manoush!!! what happened to you Manoush? You left us high and dry.

NYC peanuts!

NYC knish with lots of mustard. reminds me of my childhood

Kogi!

Frysmith

Everything else…erased from my memory.