Walking into Lemonade in Venice is at first quite frightening. This is because the place is set up sort of like a buffet/cafeteria and while that alone can be frightening to someone, the real frightening part is that the entire first section of the lineup is salads. And while these are more like your creative sweet potato or radish than lettuce and tomatoes, there is certainly a staggering amount of veggies. I quickly looked around to see if they had anything I could eat and found a nice menu that detailed some of the real food that Lemonade had to offer.

There was actually a whole section of menu dedicated to Fish and Fowl, and some of these looked good, but I felt like I was in more of a sandwich type of place, so I kept searching. What really caught my eye were the Pot Roast Sandwiches (served in Sourdough Rustic Rolls, which I guess is really different from urban sourdough), and one of them in particular looked especially delicious. This was the Beef Short Rib and Mac and Cheese. I asked the woman behind the counter whether that sandwich came with any other ingredients and she assured me it didn’t. As we walked down the aisle I saw that these sandwiches were quite literally borne of pot roasts, because they had the pot roasts themselves on display for all to see. The simmering short ribs looked delicious and I couldn’t wait to make them a part of me. The sandwiches generally come with some sort of greens, but there is also an option to get a couple of their strange salads instead of the greens. Although I had no desire to be a part of such food, I did get a couple of those salad-esque sides for my girlfriend. I am so selfless.

We also got some of their namesake lemonades to accompany our meals. What makes their lemonades unique is that they mix in herbs like mint and rosemary with their ades. Some see this as creative, but I see it as strange flavors getting in the way of juice. I did, however, try the Pomegranate Tarragon lemonade, which had such a subtle tarragon flavor that I could handle it. Plus, who doesn’t want to imbibe dragon herb?

We paid up and took our numbers back to our table to await some sort of sign that our food was ready. About 10 minutes later, the sound of my name was the sign that I needed. I walk up to the counter to retrieve our sandwiches and noticed something strange about mine. It was certainly beefy, but there was something amiss. This thing came in the form of a green tomato. I asked the man behind the counter if this was actually the Beef Short Rib and Mac and Cheese sandwich and he assured me it was, so I brought it back to my table ready to write a complainy blog post about how the first person didn’t warn me, but as I removed the green tomato slice, I found that there was a strange stash of jalapenos and a complete lack of macaroni. I looked at the menu I had at the table and realized I had been given the complete wrong sandwich. Instead of my wholesome unvegan order, I had been given the BBQ Brisket, Green Tomato, Cheddar and Jalapeno Sandwich.

Upon discovering this, I brought the sandwich back up to the counter with my receipt and explained my issue. The people seemed confused, as though this had never happened, and after a minute they told me they would redo my sandwich. No apology was offered, which was fine by me, but after a few minutes of preparing sandwiches for other patrons, it was apparent that they hadn’t rushed to right their wrong.

Finally, after a wait nearly as long as the original, my name was called again and my sandwich was ready. This time it was the real thing. I hoped that it would be better than their customer service. Luckily, it was. The beef was incredibly tender and the spices it had been cooked in made it very flavorful. But really the sandwich ended there. Although putting mac and cheese in it was a nice thought, it really added nothing to the sandwich in terms of flavor or texture. In fact, if the mac and cheese hadn’t been there at all, I don’t think the sandwich would have tasted any different. I’m not sure if this means the beef was so good or the mac and cheese was so blah, but whichever it was, I would have liked to have felt like I was eating all the ingredients of the sandwich.

Needless to say, my trip to Lemonade was disappointing. I understand that restaurants make mistakes and I certainly don’t fault them for that, but I do fault them for not heeding my question of whether I got the right sandwich and later making very little attempt to fix their little mishap. This wasn’t about me being an unvegan who hates vegetables, it was just disappointing service and a sandwich that didn’t make up for it.

Finally, I feel like I’ve been to just about all of the food trucks in LA that I have any desire to visit. Yes, I know I haven’t been to all of them, but I think I’ve been to enough to justify paying a visit to the Border Grill Truck, despite the fact that the Border Grill is already a restaurant I have been to. I guess I just wanted to see how an upscale Mexican restaurant could translate into a truck. People seemed to be enjoying their food outside of the truck, so I went to see if I could partake in their enjoyment.

They were actually running a special that looked quite nice to me. It was Chorizo Hash Taquitos with Chipotle Crema. Sounds perfectly unvegan, right? So I ordered two for five bucks. Just to be sure, I asked if the taquitos came with anything else on them, like vegetables, and was told they didn’t.

So imagine my surprise as the taquitos were handed to me and covered in dreadful pico de gallo. Obviously I had been lied to and I grabbed a fork from the truck to scrape off this awful concoction of tomato and onion. Unfortunately, this also scraped away the chipotle crema, leaving me very little to actually taste for myself. With these vegetables taken care of, I took a bite of the taquitos and discovered even more objectionable vegetables, peppers! And this wasn’t just one bite of anomaly. Interspersed throughout these taquitos were peppers (and not the hot kind, which are tasty) that were nearly impossible to remove because of the closed-off nature of taquitos.

Unfortunately, the edible parts of the taquitos weren’t tasty enough to justify such liberal vegetable use. The chorizo was decent, but hard to taste over the peppers. The chipotle crema on top was also decent, but probably would have been better if I could have eaten more of it. If only they had told me my meal was going to be invaded by veggies, I could have not ordered it. Instead, I was misled, which made things even worse. Sorry, Border Grill Truck, but five bucks is a high price to pay for an okay taquito special filled with lies.

I visited the India Jones truck at good old First Fridays evening on Abbot Kinney. The area was pretty packed, but I had been following India Jones on Twitter and was eager to try them out. When I got there, Mr. Jones himself was dealing with a horrible skater punk who had decided to steal a can of Pellegrino. It was an uncomfortable situation, because the skater guy was obviously a terrible person, and luckily someone stepped in and grabbed the can to return to Jones. One of his idiot friends decided to hit the truck with his skateboard and ran away, because he was like a child, and although Jones chased after him, it was to no avail, the buffoon had gotten away. After seeing this, my hunger for some food from this truck grew even more. Jones was willing to defend his truck and fight against dumb hooligans, so I was happy to support. And by support I mean order food.

I decided I had to get one of their frankies, which is a street food from India. The frankies here included cilantro tamarind chutney, chopped onion and egg, all wrapped in a thin bread for $3.50. I ordered mine with lamb and without onion. After a few minutes it was ready and looked great. I tasted it and it was pretty great. It was onion-free, but had some delicious spices in it. The lamb tasted great and all-in-all it was really easy to eat in that wrap. My only problem with it was that I wanted more. Of course, at only $3.50, it was a great value and I couldn’t complain. I would definitely get one of these, but stick with lamb because I can’t imagine that tasting as good with any other meat.

Combining Asian Food and Soul Food is kind of an interesting concept, and in doing so the Asian Soul Kitchen truck was born in LA. I decided to follow them on Twitter because their twitter name of “itsbentobaby” sounded pretty awesome to me. I found them on Abbot Kinney and took a look at their menu. Although some of their specific Asian foods like yakisoba looked good, I needed something with a lot more meat to it. To get that fix, I turned to their Lollipop Chicken.

This chicken was fried drumsticks covered in a tamarind glaze. The tamarind glaze was really what added the Asian touch to this chicken. It also came with a choice of white, brown or black rice, which isn’t exactly the norm for fried chicken. Nonetheless, I decided to go with black rice. When my chicken was ready, it came in a nice little box, which definitely elicited thoughts of bento. Inside, there were three decent-sized drumsticks and a wad of rice.

The chicken tasted pretty good, and the sauce was also nice. It’s hard to mess up fried chicken, but it’s also hard to make it special, so while this was pretty good, it didn’t change the way I think of fried chicken or make me always want to eat it with tamarind. Oh well. The price was also a bit steep. $5 is not a lot of money, but it is a lot for 3 drumsticks, especially when they tack on sales tax on top of that.

Asian Soul Kitchen was pretty good for a visit, but the Lollipop Chicken wasn’t great enough to make me desire more.

No, this isn’t LA’s new mobile petshop, although that is a genius idea that someone should really get on. Instead, it is another one of LA’s constantly expanding collection of mobile food trucks. Dogtown Dogs specializes in hot dogs, which isn’t entirely creative considering the existence of Let’s Be Frank. Despite this, I tracked them down one night after hearing some pretty good things about their dogs. As with most mobile eateries, I ended up finding them parked near the Brig on Abbot Kinney.

Upon looking at the menu, I instantly knew that this was going to be an improvement upon Let’s Be Frank. Each hot dog was all beef, which is always preferable, but two delicious-looking unvegan dogs stood out to me. The first was the Morning Commute, which was wrapped in applewood smoked bacon and topped with a fried egg. The other one was the Trailer Trash, which was topped with chili and Fritos. I briefly toyed with the idea of combining these to make the ultimate death dog, but then my arteries yelled at me. Instead, I just ordered the Morning Commute and decided that if it was good enough, I would return later to test out the Trailer Trash. I handed over six bucks, which was cheaper than the vegetable-laden dogs, but still a bit expensive for my taste. It’s hard not to think of hot hot dogs as cheap food when you are used to Costco.

It took a surprisingly long time for the hot dog to be prepared, but I wouldn’t want to hurry bacon. Once it was finished, the dog looked pretty nice and happy to not be fighting against vegetables. I bit in and was also pretty happy. The bacon was nice and thick, but still crispy, while the dog had a nice snap to it when you bit in. I guess that’s why they are called “snap dogs.” The unfortunate part about the hot dog was that the egg wasn’t exactly made to fit in the shape of the dog. It was the regular semi-ovular shape of a fried egg, but that meant my first couple bites were egg-free. When I did reach that egg, the hot dog improved greatly. And then once my teeth pierced the yolk and sent the gooey insides running down the dog, I had a new dipping sauce!

Upon finishing my hot dog, I was pretty happy. This new truck didn’t do anything amazing or break any new ground, but they figured out how to make a pretty good hot dog, albeit in a somewhat costly way. Now if they could only figure out how to stretch the egg across the entire hot dog, that would be a great new trick for a relatively new dog.

EDIT: While the truck is grounded for good, the Flying Pig has spawned some brick and mortar that may or may not be anything like the truck.

For my second course on First Fridays in Abbot Kinney, I headed out to one of LA’s newest food trucks, the Flying Pig. When I first read about this Mexican-French fusion truck, I wasn’t too amazed by what I read. Fusing Mexican food with Asian is one thing, but to try to fuse it with French as well seemed like a strange niche that I didn’t need to explore. Lo and behold, my opinion changed when I saw the truck and the happy customers outside of it.

Rather than making French food and putting it into tortillas and such, this truck went gourmet and uses French techniques to make really good food, then puts it into tortillas. The prices also reflected a bit of a gourmet markup, with tacos running for $2.50, rather than the average cost of $2. Their menu wasn’t really built for an unvegan, with almost every item featuring a vegetable of some sort. I settled upon the Grilled Beef Short Rib taco and the Tamarind Duck taco. The beef one came with oyster mushrooms and a mysterious “death sauce,” while the duck came with toasted almond and pickled beet salad. I asked for the beef without mushrooms, and was extremely disappointed to be told that the shrooms were mixed in with the beef. Thinking fast, I ordered the Smoked Chicken instead. This came with green curry and napa slaw. I ordered it without the nasty slaw and then ordered my duck without the absurd-sounding pickled beet salad.

When my food was presented to me, I must admit I was a little disappointed in the diminutive size of the tacos. Sure, they were the same size as a typical taco truck taco, but I was hoping that extra 50 cents might somehow translate into more food. I was also a little upset that the Tamarind Duck taco had somehow been topped with clovers. I really have no problem with clovers, as they are tasteless and textureless, but it is unnecessary to cut down these poor, defenseless plants as they do nothing to enhance food in any way.

After all this consideration, I bit into the duck taco. It was pretty amazing. The duck was nicely glazed and perfectly flavored. Each bite was slightly chewy, but gave pretty easily. The toasted almonds were a nice touch, too. After this great experience, I tried out the smoked chicken. One again, I was floored by how good it was. The chicken pulled apart quite nicely and curry, coupled with the juices, brought the taco together quite well.

These tacos were kind of a luxury in the food truck world. It was definitely worth it for the extra 50 cents, yet it will be hard to pull myself away from all the varieties of cheaper tacos.

Sometimes, following LA’s food trucks on Twitter can be a difficult process. If you don’t have a Twitter account or a smartphone, then it gets even harder (seriously, not having Twitter or a smartphone is soooo 2008). Luckily for those who fight the future of technology, there is a little event on the first Friday of every month on Abbot Kinney in Venice creatively called First Fridays. These nights are the best opportunity to experience LA’s food truck culture.

One truck I’ve been trying to find for a while happened to be there. It’s called South Philly Experience (SPE) and dishes out Philly Cheese Steaks, plus a couple other random East Coast faves like Tastykakes. The menu was as basic as you’d expect from a food truck, offering a couple varieties of sandwiches, but I only wanted the original. I ordered as specified on the menu, “witout” onions and “wit” Cheez Wiz, as I’ve heard the Wiz is Philly’s top choice for cheese steaks.

As noted on the truck, SPE gets their bread all the way from Philly to ensure they do these sandwiches right. Part of their plan seems to be a way to dish out authentic Philly Cheese Steaks on the West Coast, but it also seemed like they were looking for a way to get all the authentic ingredients so they could eat the real thing themselves. Nothing wrong with that, as I would love to bring some authentic Michigan food out to the West Coast for myself and to sell from a truck.

When my sandwich was given to me, it was wrapped in some paper dripping with Wiz and grease. Perfect. I ripped open the paper and dug in. This was a delicious blend of beef and cheese and bread. The beef was juicy and oh so flavorful. It probably would have been good enough on its own, but the Wiz made it even better. I downed it in as few bites as possible and despite the obvious caloric intake, I was ready for more.

This truck is definitely worth visiting. It’s a little pricier ($8.50 for a sandwich) than the average food truck, but well worth the price.

The highly anticipated Grilled Cheese Truck finally rolled into town tonight and due to my frightening obsession with cheese, I made sure to greet the truck. In the tradition of other great ks before it, the unveiling took place at The Brig on Abbot Kinney. I arrived 15 minutes before the scheduled 8:00 start time and was shocked to find the parking lot at The Brig empty except for the shiny orange truck. Apparently, I was to be the first in line!

Within a few minutes, other people formed a line behind me, assuaging my fears that this was some sort of well-coordinated, but cruel joke played on me. As 8:00 rolled around, someone asked when the truck would open, only to discover they weren’t really expecting to open until 8:30. Patient and unwilling to give up my prime spot, I continued to wait. I was glad I didn’t leave, because my hanging around gave me the chance to meet Zach Behrens, editor for LAist. He gave me a little interview, which should probably be popping up on LAist soon. But back to the truck.

Finally, 8:30 arrived and one of the proprietors of the truck came outside to announce that technical difficulties were hampering the preparations of the mighty grilled cheese. One of the griddles wasn’t working, so with heavy hearts and even heavier anticipation, we realized we would have to wait even longer.

Then, something magical happened. Rather than face an impatient mob, the workers (including someone’s elderly and incredibly sweet parents) started handing out samples of what they could prepare on a single partially-functioning griddle. First came the soups, which I politefully declined since they were vegetables like tomato and pumpkin. Then came the tater tots. These were nice and crispy, but a little bit too salty. It definitely saved me the trouble of having to order my own side of tater tots.

As more time passed, they brought out the mother of all samples, the Cheesy Mac and Rib. This little delight was filled with mac and cheese, plus BBQ pork. In two bites I was finished and knew I would have to order a full sandwich with that.

Finally, around 9:30, a mechanic came and went, signifying the real melt was about to begin. I sauntered over to the window to finally place my order. Although my Cheesy Mac and Ribs sample didn’t have carmelized onions, the menu said it came with them, so I first ordered one of those without the onions. Unfortunately at some point between dishing out the samples and taking my order, they had combined the onions with the meat, creating a concoction unfit for an unvegan. As a replacement, they suggested bacon, and I didn’t argue. In addition, I ordered a regular cheddar grilled cheese with bacon and a dessert grilled cheese, which was made of a roasted banana puree, Nutella and marshmallow. The woman taking my order asked how many people were in my party and I laughed as I told her all that food was for me.

The bill came out to just under $20, which was a little sad, but then I did order three entire sandwiches. The strange part was that the prices didn’t include sales tax. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a mobile eatery that didn’t just include sales tax in the prices, and a fear that dealing with copious amounts of change will hinder the efficiency of their operation. Nonetheless, my order was in and although I was first in line, I was given the number 6 and a coupon for half off next time to thank me for waiting.

When my number was called, I dashed over to grab my sandwiches. They were packed in convenient little foil bags, which I rapidly tore open to begin eating. I started with the Cheesy Mac and Bacon. It was pretty darn good, but not as good as that onion-free sample of Cheesy Mac and Rib I tested out earlier. After taking that sandwich down, I moved on to the Cheddar and Bacon, which was grilled perfectly, but couldn’t compare to having mac and cheese in a sandwich. Finally came the dessert melt. This was the least tasty of the lot. The bread was kind of dry and the insides were a bit overwhelming with sweetness (yes, it is possible).

Overall, the sandwiches showed that the chefs had a great understanding of how to use the griddle. Each sandwich was grilled to a crispy perfection and I know that despite the relatively minor maintenance issues, the grilled cheese truck has a bright future on the streets of LA. Especially if they can separate their caramelized onions from the BBQ Pork!