Food Trucks Read online

  LaBan points to Honest Tom’s as “one of the first sort of twenty-first century hipster food trucks where people were checking Twitter and giving reviews with texting emoticons,” and he’s particularly excited about the impending arrival of Guapo’s Tacos, an upscale taco truck from Iron Chef Jose Garces, whose army of restaurants—including Tinto, Amada, and Village Whiskey—are far and away the city’s strongest concepts. The city has designated three hundred as the magic number to limit the amount of food trucks parked on Philly’s streets, so if the trend does catch fire as LaBan hopes, there’s still plenty of room out there. But whether or not the new guard can tap into the average Philadelphian’s wallet and stomach remains to be seen, as they’ve long been quite practical with both.

  ( SIDE DISH )

  Both the name and the concept of KoJa (University Ave. between Sansom and Walnut Sts.) are an amalgamation of Korean and Japanese, with bulgogi and mandoo sharing menu space with soba noodles and teriyaki dishes. The truck itself has been serving both Korean and Japanese food for two decades, but the current owner, Soo Lee, and her brother Douglas have been operating under the name KoJa since 2006. Teriyaki chicken over soba noodles and bulgogi on rice are the most popular standards, but it’s the jigae, Korean stews, that are criminally overlooked. Lee’s sundubu, a traditional spicy tofu soup, is dotted with shrimp, squid, and clams and packs plenty of heat via gochujang (chile paste) for a steaming and sinus-clearing solution to a cold Philly day.

  La Dominique

  FIND IT: Market St. at 33rd St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  The ridiculously long line snaking up the sidewalk to La Dominique isn’t because Zbigniew Chojnacki makes a crepe unlike any other. It’s because “Ziggy” (as he’s known to friends and regulars) makes a crepe slower than any other. Calmly spreading the batter with the back of a ladle until it reaches the edges of the hot crepe iron, reaching into his tiny cooler to pull out whole strawberries to slice to order, cutting strips of red bell pepper over his three-foot flattop grill—everything Ziggy does is methodical, graceful, and done with care. But it’s enough to drive a short-order cook (or an impatient and hungry customer) mad.

  In his fifties, with a full head of silver hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and the lanky frame of a European who likes red wine and cigarettes, Ziggy is not concerned with the speed of his creations, but only with the process and the final work of art. A trained metal sculptor, Ziggy has been making and selling his jewelry and large-scale works in this country since the mid-1980s. He and his wife Krystyna fled the political upheaval of Dansk, Poland, in 1984, settling in Los Angeles with help of a Catholic refugee organization. Ziggy sculpted, Krystyna painted, and the couple eventually found considerable success with their art in the States. Moves to Colorado and then Michigan were dictated by their oldest daughter’s figure-skating career; she was training to qualify for the Olympics when she suffered a concussion at fifteen and had to retire. Soon after, a fellow artist lured Ziggy to the East Coast, and in 2000 the family settled in Philadelphia, where Ziggy wasted little time getting his work into the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “But then so many art shows where I used to go for many years disappeared. The buyers stopped buying,” Ziggy recalls. “This was the time of the war and all of this spending by Bush and the economic downturn. The first victim of the war is always culture, and I saw that there was no way to stay in art. At that time, a guy here in Philadelphia told me, ‘You’re never going to make money with jewelry. You can only make money selling guns or food.’ He was very right. And I chose the food.”

  When Ziggy showed up in the driveway with a food cart in tow, Krystyna was “furious,” as Ziggy puts it. “She told me I was losing my mind.” But a fellow artist had recently made the same move and was not only supporting herself but also having fun doing it. Eventually Krystyna came around, helping Ziggy concoct the menu of fillings and toppings for the crepes he channeled via memories of his mother’s weekend treats back in Poland. His plan from the outset was to keep it simple (the six by three-foot cart doesn’t allow for the complex), to use hormone- and antibiotic-free chicken, free-range eggs, organic produce, and a classic batter. Now that she’s on board, Krystyna helps out by preparing a few fillings: a creamed spinach, chicken stewed in coconut milk, fresh hummus, and a spreadable sweet cheese flecked with orange zest. These are the only items on the cart prepared before Ziggy sets up for the day, the savory fillings taking their place in two small warmers alongside the pair of crepe irons. Only one of the irons is in constant use; the other Ziggy uses to keep nearly finished crepes warm while he fusses with the container, the toppings, a napkin, a fork, waving hello to a passing friend … any of the myriad things that make the process of ordering a test of wills.

  Still, the people come. They wait, they order, they leave with a savory crepe bigger than an ironworker’s forearm, and they fire back to first-timer friends with, “Yeah, but it’s worth it.” The most basic crepe on the menu might also be the best: a simple squeeze of lemon and a dusting of powdered sugar leave room to focus on the wafer-crisp edges and perfectly spongy center. It’s worth every cent of the three-dollar price tag, and it’s probably the only moneymaker on the menu. Ziggy insists on stuffing his savory crepes until they look like a fat man’s button-down after Sunday supper. He claims the customers have come to expect value from his cart, even while he admits he’s not making much money in his new career. His business-minded daughter, now in college, tries to help Dad with the basics of profit and loss. Ziggy shows little patience for the topic, waving away money talk and focusing instead on adding just one more swirl of sauce or dollop of whipped cream to the towering crepes before closing their containers and handing them through the window. Occasionally he winces, smacks his forehead, and asks for it back, taking a moment to pop open the lid and add a final touch. “I am working with my hands, so it is familiar,” Ziggy says. “But sometimes I’m not happy with the design.”

  Pear Crepes

  Makes about 16 crepes

  1½ cups unbleached flour

  1¼ cups milk

  1¼ cups water

  3 eggs

  1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1 cup white farmer’s cheese

  1 cup sour cream

  1 tablespoon sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Zest of 1 orange

  4 d’Anjou pears, cored and thinly sliced

  1 cup dark chocolate sauce (preferably Trader Joe’s brand)

  1 cup sliced almonds, toasted

  In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, milk, water, eggs, butter, and salt until free of lumps. Set aside.

  In a separate bowl, combine the farmer’s cheese, sour cream, sugar, vanilla, and orange zest. Beat with a hand mixer or blend with a spatula until creamy.

  Heat an 8-inch nonstick pan over medium heat (use a 10-inch pan if you want larger crepes). Pour enough of the batter into the center of the pan so that when you pick up the pan and swirl the batter it reaches the edges but is no thicker than ¼ inch in the center.

  As the edges begin to turn light golden brown, use a spatula to lift up the crepe at the edge to check the bottom. Once it is golden brown, flip the crepe. Continue to cook until the other side is equally golden brown, then transfer to a plate. Slather some of the cheese mixture on top, arrange a few pear slices on top, and fold the crepe in half, then in half again. Drizzle with the chocolate sauce and garnish with the almond slices before serving. Repeat to make 15 more crepes.

  ( SIDE DISH )

  The hotel and restaurant management program at Drexel University didn’t exactly inspire Tom McCusker to go into the industry, so when he wrapped up school in 2004, he worked a few odd jobs and did things like hop on his Harley Super Glide for the four-day ride to Austin. Turns out, that particular road trip actually drew him back into the food business. “My friends and I got to Austin and were so exhausted we just passed out in my uncle’s place at around nine at night, bu
t we woke up the next morning to these amazing breakfast tacos he brought us from a food truck nearby. That was it. I knew I wanted to bring breakfast tacos to Philly.” And so he did, buying a truck formerly known as Viva Las Vegans and opening under the name Honest Tom’s (on 33rd St. between Market and Arch Sts. Monday through Thursday; on Vine St. between 17th and 18th Sts. Friday; at Clark Park, 43rd St., and Baltimore Ave. Saturday) in spring of 2009, with nothing more than breakfast tacos and iced Stumptown coffee on the menu. True to the Austin classic, McCusker wraps soft corn tortillas around griddle-fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, and Monterey Jack cheese, then piles on a spoonful of guac and fresh pico de gallo. They’re popular enough, but when the city’s Mural Arts Program gave his truck a psychedelic paint job using every color on the wheel, business picked up and so did the requests. McCusker’s repertoire now extends to lunch with sweet potato tacos, a grilled chicken version, and, on Fridays only, limey tilapia tacos topped with pineapple salsa. But for breakfast, he remains faithful to the meatless potato-egg- and-cheese tacos that started it all.

  Mr. C’s “Sweetmeat” Bar-B-Que

  FIND IT: N Broad St. between Jefferson and Oxford Sts. (Thursday and Friday noon–4 p.m.) or N Broad St. at Germantown Ave. (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 4 p.m.–1 a.m.; Sundays 12:30 p.m.–8 p.m.), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  You can smell the smoke before you can see the menu, sweet and pungent with a trace of hickory and the tang that makes your mouth water before you even know what it’s watering for. Inside the hulking aluminum truck parked along Philly’s busy Broad Street is Clifton Moore, part trucker, part pit master, every bit the gentle Southerner, and not at all resembling his seventy-two years of age. As a boy on his grandparents’ farm in Orange, Virginia, Clifton helped raise hogs and chicken, pulled vegetables from the field, and tended to the cow. But when he came to Philadelphia in high school, he left the farm life behind for the open road, getting work at a trucking company hauling produce, a job he kept for nearly twenty years before quitting once he had enough money for his own rig. “Refrigerated,” Clifton recalls. “I was running produce, a little meat, up the West Coast. I branched out and moved a little bit too fast, got up to fifteen trucks, but they started breaking down and then they deregulated everything, which put a damper on what you could make because a lot of people would haul for a lot cheaper. I went out of business in 1986, but, well, I went out and bought four more. I just couldn’t stay away from those trucks. In the meantime I saw this fellow doing barbecue out of a truck. Now, I’m a pretty good cook, and if he had all these people lined up for what he was cooking? Well, I did the arithmetic.”

  And it added up to a new business. At first Clifton set up an old-school oil drum smoker and sold his “Sweetmeat” barbecue right on the street (“I call it sweetmeat ’cause it’s so good”). The health department didn’t like that too much, and after a couple of threats from an inspector to shut down the operation, Clifton decided demand for his ribs and chopped brisket was enough to take the plunge and go legit. He sold all his trucks but one and went to work installing a double-decker charcoal grill wide enough for a couple dozen slabs of ribs. He got his permit and hit the streets in 1988, selling his barbecue alongside his wife Beverly’s Southern sides and pies. His spareribs are slow-cooked pork at its finest, rubbed with seasoning salt and pepper, then smoked over a fire that starts with hickory and progresses into lump charcoal. Those ribs share space with whole chickens sprinkled with lemon pepper and poultry seasoning, beef brisket in a garlicky salt-and-pepper rub, and pork shoulder, liberally salted and lightly sweetened. All are cooked slow and low in true barbecue fashion, emerging from behind the grill’s heavy metal door with a caramelized crust of seasonings and showing just a touch of pink smoke ring when cut into.

  As impressive as the “sweetmeat” is on its own, it rises to can-I-get-a-witness-inspirational when plated up with Beverly’s creamy cinnamon-scented yams, collard greens soaked in turkey neck potlikker, and bubbly crusted mac and cheese, thick with Cheddar. Clifton brags that Beverly’s sweet potato pie and peach cobbler are the best around, but he also gets his hands into the flour a bit, turning out a “five-flavor pound cake” typical of a Southern church bake sale. He doesn’t keep track of which is the better seller, plus he eats too much of the cake himself for an honest count, but his customers love the lineup enough to support two trucks and a small storefront, all of which are closed Monday through Wednesday so that the couple can regroup, restock, and be grandparents for a few days. Beverly is ready to retire to their twenty acres in Virginia, and Clifton says he’d be ready himself after a few more years of work if he could sell the business to an aspiring pit master—but he stops short of promising to give up both trucks.

  Mr. C’s Pulled Pork

  Serves 12 to 20

  ¼ cup seasoning salt (such as Lawry’s)

  ¼ cup freshly ground black pepper

  3 tablespoons salt

  2 tablespoons granulated garlic

  1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

  1 tablespoon sugar

  4 cups water

  1 cup hot sauce (such as Louisiana)

  5 to 6 pounds pork shoulder

  Preheat a smoker or grill set up for indirect cooking until the temperature reaches 225°F.

  In a bowl, combine the seasoning salt, pepper, salt, granulated garlic, cayenne, and sugar to make the dry rub.

  Combine the water and the hot sauce in a deep pan large enough to hold the pork shoulder. Rub the spice mixture into the pork shoulder, then place it into the pan and transfer to the smoker. Cook for 12 to 15 hours, or until it is so tender it pulls apart with ease. (You will have to keep an eye on the fire, adding more wood every few hours, to keep it at a constant 225°F. Another option is to use a smoker with an automatic wood-pellet feeder.)

  Serve chopped or sliced across the grain.

  Mrs. C’s Sweet Potato Pie

  Serves 8

  1 store-bought pie crust

  1½ pounds sweet potatoes

  ½ teaspoon cinnamon

  ½ teaspoon nutmeg

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1 egg

  ½ cup whole milk

  2½ tablespoons sugar

  ½ cup unsalted butter, melted

  Preheat the oven to 300°F. Bake the pie crust for 15 minutes and set aside to cool.

  Place the unpeeled sweet potatoes in a large pot of water. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat to a simmer, and cook until the peels slide off when pulled with a spoon, about 1 hour.

  Drain the sweet potatoes. When they’re cool enough to handle, remove the skins. Transfer them back to the pot and mash until smooth. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla, then beat with a handheld electric mixer until thoroughly blended.

  In a separate bowl, beat the egg and the milk together. Add the egg mixture, sugar, and melted butter to the sweet potato mixture and continue to beat with the mixer until very smooth.

  Preheat the oven to 400°F.

  Spoon the mixture into the prebaked pie crust and bake for 10 minutes, then lower the temperature to 375°F and continue baking until golden brown, 30 to 45 minutes. Let cool for at least 30 minutes, then serve at room temperature.

  ( SIDE DISH )

  Ludlow Street (around 31st St.) is only about a block long, with one end fizzling out into the maze of Drexel University sidewalks and the other end forming a T that pushes most pedestrians left to the 30th Street subway station. Still, students have found their way to this concrete food court for almost thirty years, lured by the cheap eats slung out of eight battered and bruised food trucks showing their age and not giving a damn. Near the western end, T&S Lunch Truck is the patriarch of the bunch, opened by a family of Greek-Americans, the Stephanos, in 1983, while the Syrian-run A&M Lunch Truck that anchors the eastern end of the strip is the newcomer at only four years. All of the trucks’ menus are nearly identical—hoagies, salads, burgers—but still the students and faculty seem to develop a taste for their favor
ites, from the fried rice at Mai’s Oriental Food to the egg sandwiches at Sue’s. You could choose blindfolded and still do okay in a pinch, but I’m guessing most of this stuff tastes better when you’re broke and cramming for finals.

  Magic Carpet

  FIND IT: 36th and Spruce Sts. or 34th and Walnut Sts., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Dean Varvoutis started serving ’70s food in the ’80s, hoping to combat the decade of New Coke and Nacho Cheese Doritos with hummus, falafel, and marinated tofu. Okay, so technically those aren’t foods indigenous to the ’70s, but that’s when flower-powered healthy eating took hold in America—it just took baby boomer Dean a few years to get with the program. Once he did, he towed a horse-drawn cart to a sidewalk on the Penn campus, put out a sandwich board announcing the Magic Carpet specialties, and waited for the Birkenstocks to come clomping his way. “I made $7,” Dean recalls. “I was driving all the way from Phoenixville, thirty miles, truckin’ on down here in my Volvo pulling this cart, and the food ended up everywhere. I spent the first hour cleaning up because of all the bumping around. I was in the middle of the block because I didn’t know where to go, and I made $7. The next day, this Asian man came up to me and said, ‘Very nice cart. You should come down by me tomorrow.’ So I did. I went down to his corner a half block down the street and that day I made $150. A week later, this other Asian man comes up and starts yelling at me that he was going to take that spot. Turns out the other guy I thought was being nice was just trying to block his competition. And that was just the beginning.”