Recently a little pho place opened down the street from me and called itself Super Pho & Teriyaki. Anything that starts with super must be pretty cool, so I took a stroll down the road with my friend so we could get ourselves a taste. The place is pretty tiny and nondescript, but had enough tables open for us. We ordered at the counter and I decided to get their House Pho. This included meat balls, brisket, tendon and tripe. A few more organs and I would have had enough to build a whole cow from scratch in my stomach.

We took out seats to wait for our pho and then realized that under the counter, they actually had some things to throw in the pho, although most were leafy or vegetable-like so I didn’t really spend much time there. They did, however, have free hot tea, so I grabbed a cup of that. After a slightly lengthy wait, my pho was ready.

At first, I did a search for the tripe and tendons, since those were going to be the most fun to eat. I had eaten both before, but not in soup form. Struggling to find these, I ate some meatballs and brisket. The meatballs were incredibly rubbery and tough to eat, which was disappointing. The brisket was a step up in rubbery texture, but still kind of chewy. Although the brisket had decent flavor, I never thought I would look so forward to eating organs. Finally, I found myself some tripe. Tripe has an incredibly strange texture which I remembered not enjoying last time, but this time the tripe was nice and chewy, while maintaining that unique texture. It didn’t have too much flavor, but I don’t know what kind of flavor I would want from stomach.

Lastly, I found the tendon. I remembered this being kind of jelly-like, but wasn’t sure what sort of difference it would make in soup. In fact, the texture remained as I remembered it, as a sort of overly coagulated jell-o. It had also absorbed some good flavor from the soup, which was quite nice.

The rest of the soup tasted pretty ordinary, but good, especially with some chili oil added. Next time I’ll be okay avoiding the meatballs, but it was a good opportunity for me to revisit those strange meats of tripe and tendon and actually enjoy them. Now I’m just eager to find out what these will taste like at the end of a long night of drinking next door at Big Foot West.

One day I received a random Twitter follow from @derbsgourmet. It piqued my interest so, I decided to follow them and found out that they were a new food truck called Derb’s Gourmet and set to launch in a couple days. Not only that, but they were launching at a bar right down the street from me, Bigfoot West. The sheer convenience was a sign that I had to try them out.

I arrived at 10:00, since that was supposed to be their launch time and saw that this was no normal food truck. Instead, it was an actual trailer being pulled by a flatbed truck. This was certainly a new concept to me. Unfortunately, we were told that they wouldn’t actually start taking orders for a half-hour. Instead of waiting, we went into the bar to grab a drink, which was oh so convenient. Coming out about 45 minutes later, we were told there was still a wait. So we waited. And waited. And finally they opened their shutters and we put our orders in. Their menu was pretty limited and far different from the online menu, so I ordered a beef taco and the set of Filet Mignon sliders. The burgers only came with bleu cheese and the taco only came with salsa. This sounded too good to be true.

One thing that made this trailer cooler than a truck was that you could see inside to their kitchen and catch everything they were doing. The only problem with this was that as soon as I saw them pile pico de gallo on to my taco, I was powerless to stop them. I long for the day when people recognize that pico de gallo should never be called salsa. The very meaning of salsa is sauce, while pico de gallo is just sliced up tomatoes and onions. There is nothing saucy about that. Unfortunately Derb’s still didn’t know this difference and I was forced to pick off those nasty tomatoes and onions when my taco was done.

After the picking, the taco tasted just alright. It wasn’t bad, but really there was nothing that made it taste more special than any other generic taco truck taco. According to their online menu, they will have some Hula Chicken tacos and short rib tacos with peanut sauce in the future that sound awesome. Unfortunately, there was nothing awesome about this taco.

Next, I tried my Filet Mignon sliders (which, of course were just mini hamburgers and not sliders in the true sense). These shocked me by being really good. I’d never thought of using Filet Mignon as hamburger meat because it isn’t very fatty, but they found a way to keep these burgers juicy while still maintaining the tenderness and flavor of the filet. They had a great bleu cheese on them and the buns were grilled to a nice crisp. To make things even better, the buns were no normal buns, but were sweet like King’s Hawaiian bread (and for all I know, it actually may have been that brand).

Derb’s is definitely worth visiting for those “sliders,” but until they start serving more interesting tacos and some of the other fun-looking food on their menu, this truck is going to have some troubles. Keep in mind that the rating reflects the overall experience rather than just the burgers, which were awesome.

Oh and thanks to Joel Danto for being my photographer.