While trying to be environmentally conscious, my office invited environmentally-friendly Green Truck over for some lunch. At first I was frightened by this, since the term “green” has taken on a pretty anti-meat connotation. It’s a damn shame, too, since green is the second-best color in the world. The best, of course, being orange. But I digress, back to some truckery. Despite the frightening name, the Green Truck did have some unvegan choices, including hot dogs and hamburgers. Even before heading out to the truck, I checked out the menu and decided I wanted one of their hot dogs. What’s more environmentally friendly than hot dogs? Well I guess since they are Niman Beef, they are quite advantageous for the environment.
Although it seems like I’ve reviewed just about every truck on the streets of LA, there are still a few waiting for an unvegan visit. Lomo Arigato is no longer one of these. This truck dishes out Peruvian food and although they don’t fuse this with any sort of Japanese food, they still threw the word “arigato” into their name. This confused me, but I couldn’t let the strange name distract me from food. There were only three dishes in their menu and although they all looked pretty good, I decided to order their namesake, the Lomo Saltado.
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.
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.
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.
So for my final truck on the Haiti Fundraiser day, I decided to visit an old truck that I still haven’t gotten the chance to try out. This was Barbie’s Q, “A Rollin’ BBQ Joint.” The idea of getting BBQ from a truck has always sounded kind of suspect, but my buddy told me it was pretty good, so I trusted him. I also trusted the looks of the man taking orders outside the truck that looked like he had just walked out of a Willie Nelson concert or a shootout at the OK Corral. Or both.
Joining the flashy and stylish trucks at the Haiti Fundraiser was an old-fashioned looking truck called Kabob Express. Fusion is a pretty big part of these trucks and Kabob Express has embraced that with their Mexi-Terranean fusion. Mexican and Mediterranean food is kind of a fusion match made in food heaven. Schwarma is awesome and that succulent meat can be thrown in pretty much anything to make it taste better. Kabob Express knew that and took advantage of it by offering schwarma in tacos and burritos. Hoping to save room for more food, I ordered myself a Mexi-Terranean taco.
So first off, I had never even heard of a food truck called Vesuvio. Aside from raising money, this Haiti fundraiser at T-Lofts was awesome for introducing me to some new trucks like this one. I decided to try this place out first, since my buddy was grabbing some pizza from the Slice truck right next door. The Vesuvio truck offered some Italian-style sandwiches, but I was looking for something less filling so I could eat from more trucks. Luckily, they had a solution, called Arancini.
Last week I was invited to an event called TOAST N’ TASTE, presented by Urban Daddy. The event was by invitation only, so first off, thanks to Dana for the invite. Not only did I feel awesomely elitist for being invited, but the event was free and featured the launch of the Komodo Truck. This newest truck in LA has confirmed the trend that many food trucks have been leaning towards. Basically they make some good food and stick it in tacos (and burritos in Komodo’s case, although on this night they were only making tacos). I suppose the idea is to keep withe the concept of street food and to make it easy to eat. Fine by me, as long as it tastes good.
So, if you guessed that the second and last part of my meal was going to be from Baby’s Badass Burgers, you were correct. After the pastel from Bool BBQ whet my appetite, I moved from Brazilian to burgers.
Baby’s actually hit the streets a good while ago with a strong concept: Beautiful women bringing you burgers. With such a great concept, it is pretty remarkable that this truck has managed to evade the unvegan. Fortunately, this changed when I visited the modern food court at the Miracle Mile.