Indian Fry Bread has a tragic, complicated history. Yet, it has also grown beyond that to shine a somewhat positive light on the Native Americans of the Southwest as the bread has made its way beyond the reservations. The Fry Bread Truck is proudly sling the bread around the Valley of the Sun with some interesting twists.

After much deliberation (and veggies in every option), I chose the Indian Fry Bread Burger. It was essentially that delicious fried dough wrapped around two cheeseburger patties with beans (a must for fry bread), lettuce and tomato. Let me start by saying that each of these components were delicious. The fry bread had a perfect amount of fluffiness inside to combine with the slightly crispy outside and a whole lot of oil retention. The burgers were plenty juicy and the beans did what they do. I also enjoyed both the red and green salsa options to toss on the burger.

But man, something was just off about this combination. I expected a heavy meal out of this fry bread burger, but I didn’t anticipate just how difficult it would be to get through it. I think it was simply too much savory without any balance of competing flavor profiles or lightness. I’m thinking guacamole or just straight avocado would have gotten the job done.

Sure, I would get it again, but I would probably also tweak the recipe in some way if I were running the truck to add more balance to the burger.

Like in LA, food trucks are a thing in the Phoenix area. And it makes much more sense here because everything is so damn spread out. Pasadena spoiled me. But I digress. The good news is that my office is all about bringing food trucks in every month (not for free, of course) to mix things up and to keep us from driving literal miles to the nearest food. This last time, it was Sweet Magnolia Smokehouse, serving up BBQ.

I was the first in line because I was hungry, but also because I wanted to learn what the best food was. The guy running the truck that day highly recommended the brisket in sandwich form, so despite my previous painful brisket experience I took him up on it and ordered it regular sized because I’m trying not to be the fattest person in the world. Quality over quantity, right?

Oh, I should also mention that it came with cole slaw and a side. I chose the mac and cheese and let them no there was no need for slaw because I’m not a stupid rabbit.

It arrived on a bun doused in BBQ sauce. Doused, I say. But honestly, I didn’t really mind it. Sure, I would have taken about half the sauce, but somehow the brisket itself was still able to shine through, all chopped up and full of smokey goodness. A couple of the bits were kind of tough, but that’s a minor complaint in the grand scheme of brisket. The mac and cheese was actually pretty fantastic, with a great noodle to cheese ratio and relative moistness that I found comforting.

Sweet Magnolia Smokehouse may not be the best brisket in the land, but it definitely serves up some solid BBQ – albeit with some questionable sauce volume.

In a city filled with all kinds of fun events, one event (aside from a plethora of farmer’s markets) can be counted on every week. It’s Smorgasburg, which originally started over in Brooklyn, and it’s kind of like a miniaturized, hipster version of 626 Night Market. On my first venture, I made my way to Ugly Drum Pastrami.

Truth be told, once I saw the pastrami being sliced up, I couldn’t see myself eating anything else. The trouble was that the price was pretty high, so I only snagged a half sandwich. It was sliced up and weighed precisely before being added to the bread.

I took a bite and…it was nothing short of fantastic. The rind was packed with peppery flavor (among many other things) and the rest had a smokiness that made it kind of like a mix between Jewish pastrami and BBQ brisket. Probably most important of all, it was super tender.

This was undoubtedly a perfect mix of BBQ and Jewish food. I’d hate to call it fusion, because that makes it seem like it was more intentionally mixed together. Rather, it’s just a different take on an old world favorite and one I could get behind any day.

It has been an admittedly long time since I have eaten from a food truck, let alone one in LA. Yet, while the fad has ended, there are still plenty of food trucks to chow down with as the truck still offers a low-cost entry into food-slinging. One such truck goes by the name of CreativEats and breaks essentially all (two) rules I thought necessary for a food truck’s survival.

The first rule is that the food has to be easy to eat with your hands – requiring no utensils and preferably only one hand. CreativEats does have sandwiches, but it also has rice bowls, crab cakes and salmon. The second is that the food should be highly specific and specialized – not everything for everyone.

Well, CreativEats doesn’t fit that mould, yet their Chicken Cutlet sandwich attracted me. It was made with cream cheese, brie, prosciutto and arugula, but yeah I ordered it without the arugula. Strangely enough, the sandwich turned out to be open-faced. I don’t know if they were running low on bread or doing a public service of lowering carbs, but this was a disappointment.

On the other hand, the single slice of bread was pretty thick. Plus, the chicken was slightly breaded and really after a few bites that another slice of bread would have made the sandwich too, well, bready. I could hardly taste the cream cheese, so it was probably there just to keep things moist and played its role well. The mix of brie, prosciutto and chicken worked really well, though as CreativEats managed to pack some good flavor into the chicken and really you can’t go wrong with brie or prosciutto.

It may not have been the most creative eat I’ve ever had from a food truck, but the sandwich was certainly something I would have happily eaten in a fancy sandwich shop. And hey, maybe CreativEats will be the exception that proves my food truck rules.

Every now and again a restaurant comes along and changes everything, It gives you something you never knew existed or something you knew existed, but just hadn’t found yet. The new taco truck at Carnegie Mellon creatively calling itself Camion Mexicana Universidad that just opened a couple of weeks ago is not one of those places. But for myself and a couple of guys from California, it was greeted with immediate excitement.

We all ordered a steak burrito, each customizing it to fit their needs. I got mine without sour cream or lettuce, but with the steak, two types of salsa (corn and normal), beans, rice and cheese. And when it was ready and wrapped in foil it was impressive in size. Unfortunately, that was where any positive impression ended.

As I bit in, I found myself mouth-to-burrito with a slew of tomatoes. This could be overcome with a lot of hard work, but the rest of the burrito didn’t really improve matters. The steak itself was a sickly grayish color with little flavor and even if there was a lot of flavor, it was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of rice inside.

I truly wish the place the best of luck, because perhaps people without a taste for good Mexican food could be satisfied by the taco truck. Or, perhaps they will some day read this post and know that changes can be made. After all, it is not so crazy for a spot to make adjustments to fit the needs of customers, especially so early on.

After Portland we made our way into the Great White North, although surprisingly Canada wasn’t quite covered in white in the middle of the summer. We began in Vancouver, and I found myself a Japadog stand to satisfy my hunger. In case you are unable to read between the lines, Japadog is simply a Japanese hot dog stand, serving up typical Japanese-style hot dogs and other interesting hot dogs with Japanese toppings on them. It’s been around since 2005 and is pretty well-regarded in the street food scene. At least it was regarded enough that I can say that I had heard of them at some point in my life.

After much deliberation, I decided to get their Three Cheese Smoky, a classic kurobuta pork hot dog with Swiss, Havarti and cheddar blended into it. In true Japanese style, a series of gashes were cut into the hot dog for a reason unknown to me, but it did feel authentic at least. I also ordered some shichimi (Japanese chili seasoning) and garlic fries to accompany my Japadog experience. I took a blurry picture of the dog, squeezed some ketchup out and then went on with devouring.

My initial reaction was that this was certainly a step up from the typical hot dog vendors in big cities. This wasn’t some boiled and soggy-bunned hot dog from a cart. This had taken planning and thought. Yet, it wasn’t so amazing that I felt the need to tell the world about Japadog. Surely, this could have something to do with the relatively boring order I made, but had the other hot dog options not been so laden with veggies things may have been different. Nonetheless, a Japanese hot dog cart is a cool thing and something I’m glad to have at least tried.

Da Burger Boss is part of the newer wave of food trucks and while they aren’t brand new, they’re still plenty new to me. Their schtick is naming burgers after mob terms like The Strongarm, The Collector and so on. It’s an interesting schtick that has produced some interesting-looking combinations, but the sole reason I found myself waiting for Da Boss was to partake in The Patrolman.

You see, The Patrolman is no ordinary burger. Sure, it’s filled with a half-pound patty, bacon and blue cheese dressing, but after that the burger goes in a frightening and exciting direction. First is the cran-apple reduction, which is not crazy on its own, but when you throw in the grilled glazed donut bun, things get goddamn nuts. Yes, I said a grilled glazed donut bun. I was unsure of how any degree of this would be pulled off and figure it was worth the 9 bucks to find out.

And find out I did. The first thing I wondered was how it would stay together. For starters, this wasn’t some soft, melty Krispy Kreme donut, but a thick grocery store-style breakfast sweet. It was still wildly inadequate at holding together a burger, especially when you throw the donut hole in the mix, so the make up for it the burger was wrapped in paper. Nonetheless, this was nothing less than a mess to eat.

The next thing I wondered was how I would handle the sweetness. Not only was there donut, but also fruit reduction to consider. And the truth is that the sweetness was a bit much. There was certainly a lot of savory between the bacon, patty and blue cheese, but this was not enough to counter the fruit and donut punch. My suggestion is to either swap out the glazed for old fashioned donuts or to drop the fruit. I can’t say whether either would work, but I do know that either way would be less sweet.

But who am I kidding here? Is The Patrolman really seeking out the perfect blend of burger balance? Oh dear I hope not. This burger represents America and our undying dream of gluttony and excess. In that regard, this burger is a major success. Yeah, I can get finicky with the details, but in the end, Da Burger Boss delivered a pretty good, juicy burger and topped it with an obscene bun. And I annihilated it. In other words, it was glorious.

I should also point out that Da Burger Boss in no way invented the glazed donut bun. This was something I had heard about before and Da Burger Boss is simply the first I had ever actually seen.

Hot dogs: the edible version of man’s best friend. Genius in conception and pretty easy to do well. But to do a hot dog great takes some skill and some food trucks have taken this easily portable meal to the streets to some success. Up in North Hollywood, The Wien brought its truck over to my office one day and I thought I should give it a try and see if it could compete.

Quickly, I zeroed in on a dog built for an unvegan. Called The Gunslinger, this $6 dog was wrapped in bacon, then topped with onion rings, Smokin’ Willie’s BBQ Sauce (whatever that is) and cheddar cheese. Then I figured I could use a side of chili cheese fries to keep my dog company. I ordered up and then waited just a few minuted for my hot dog to be ready. This was certainly one of the most efficient food trucks I had ever been to.

But efficiency does not necessary translate into good food, as I soon learned. I unwrapped my food to find both the dog and fries were covered with pretty unmelted shredded cheddar cheese. I wasn’t too happy to see this, because while I like cheese in any form, melted is preferred as a topping. I bit in and found just what I expected. The bacon around the hot dog was done well and the hot dog had the slightest little snap. Not as much as I would like, but enough to be respectable. The onion rings attempted to make up for this by adding a crunch to the dog and, finally, the BBQ sauce added a nice bit of sweet to counter the otherwise savory dog. It was a good dog, to be sure, but nothing particularly special or groundbreaking.

The fries, though, took the meal to another level. And that level was not a good one. Like I mentioned before, the cheese was unmelted, which meant that it wasn’t mixed too well into the chili. Not that it would have mattered, because this was some of the most flavorless chili I had ever had in my life. I’m not sure if it was homemade or not, but if it was, The Wien needs to find itself a new recipe. You know, one that calls for flavor.

So, while The Wien provided an acceptable hot dog, the chili cheese fries were far from acceptable. And if you need a microwave in that truck to melt some cheese, by all means, please do it. It could mean the difference between a good hot dog and a hot dog worth returning for.

On a one-night bender, I found myself facing down three strange taco trucks on Main Street in Santa Monica. None looked familiar and none looked particularly amazing. But it was 2 am in Los Angeles, when food options are usually limited to subpar diners and…well…taco trucks. The trucks here seemed to be some sort of missing link between gourmet and roach coaches and so after much circling we wound up at TnB BBQ.

This truck seemed to fuse Korean food with tacos (how creative), and after much deliberation, I chose the beef quesadilla for a whopping 7 bucks. This had to be a damn good and big quesadilla or I was going to be one unhappy drunk. And in my drunk, I was reduced to my most basic unvegan self and made sure to ask if there were any vegetables involved in this pricey quesadilla. The man told me no, and I stepped back to let them prepare my food.

Within minutes, my ‘dilla was ready and I looked upon it in curiosity. It wasn’t huge, but wasn’t slacking in size either. It also came with a little cup of some sort of salsa. I chomped in and what I found was some pretty decent Korean-Mexican fusion. It had your average sweet Korean beef taste and enough cheese to scare off a lactard. But what truly separated this quesadilla from every other Korean taco fusion I’ve ever had was the salsa. Not content to be a simple salsa, this stuff was fruity. And not just “oh heyyyy, lets put mangoes in our salsa” fruity. No, this was fruity to the core, with the most prominent flavor being strawberry. It made for one hell of a twist on your typical dipping sauce.

But was it good? Was it bad? I don’t really think it was either. It was just kind of…well weird. But if nothing else, TnB introduced me to something I never knew existed. Yes, I could have lived a happy life without ever having tasted strawberry salsa on a Korean quesadilla, and now that I have tasted such a thing, my life will continue on as it would have otherwise. Not better or worse, but having eaten something damn strange.

In the grand explosion of gourmet food trucks, tacos have found themselves mixed with all sorts of craziness, from Korean BBQ to fish and grapes to kung pao chicken. Yet, in all this food truck excitement, the bastard cousin/side dish of the taco has been left behind. Yeah, I’m talking ’bout Shaft…err…nachos. But along came The Nacho Truck to remedy this sad predicament. Before this truck arrived at my office, I knew nothing of it, so my expectations were pretty low. Yet, as someone who doesn’t keep nearly enough track of food happenings in LA anymore, it is certainly possible that The Nacho Truck had simply flown/driven under my radar.

So what did these guys have to offer? For one, they had your classic gameday nachos, but with a certain gourmet look to them. They called these Friday night lights, with chili, something they called the best cheese sauce ever and jalapenos. They threw in a few more interesting twists to ordinary nachos and even had a caveat on the menu encouraging substitutions. God bless creativity. But for me, creativity wasn’t necessary as The Nacho Truck had dreamed up a set of nachos most meat blogworthy.

Called The Flyover State, this nacho concoction consisted of BBQ baked beans, chili, bacon, chipotle corn, tillamook cheddar, blue cheese crumbles and BBQ ranch sauce. It weighed in a bit heavy at 9 bucks, so I was hoping these nachos would be as hearty as they sounded. But after choosing what I wanted, I still had to order and this took a solid 10 minutes. Not because of a line, but because the nacho crew was diligently putting together nachos for other patrons. Finally, I got my order in, waited another good 10 minutes and found myself looking at some wondrous nachos.

Clearly, they took their time with each order, yet I couldn’t help feeling there weren’t enough actual nachos. Until I started eating. I quickly discovered these nachos were plenty filling and plenty amazing. Rather than using corn, The Nacho Truck uses flour for their chips and the results are spectacular. I am definitely a convert, because these chips were not only tasty, but withstood the sauciness of the nachos to remain crunchy through and through. As for the toppings, I have to say I was a bit disappointed to find bits of peppers mixed into the debris. Fortunately, the flavors of bacon and beans were wildly overpowering and the peppers were hardly heard from. In fact, the flavors of the meal were almost too overpowering on the salty level. I actually wouldn’t have minded a bit less topping and a bit more chip to provide more balance. It was pretty much the opposite of what usually happens with nachos, when you are stuck eating plain chips in the end.

Yet, the power of the meat prevailed and made me damn happy this truck had made its way to the area of my working. The 9 bucks definitely provided a meal to fill me up and I would not pass up The Nacho Truck if a similar opportunity presented itself once again. Look out, tacos, the nachos are ready to do battle.