Food Trucks Page 23
The karaoke machine, the international phone, the webcam, the Putumayo world music CDs for sale: none of that is too much for Farhad. In fact, it’s just the beginning. It’s all part of his definition of Sâuçá: “a global lifestyle brand that combines food, travel, music, design, technology, and fun into the most interesting new concept to hit the streets.” But to any normal college kid walking between classes, Sâuçá is a food truck, one with a menu of flatbread wraps (“Sâuçás”), Belgian waffles with sweet toppings (“Toffles”), and minty lemonade (“Limunad”). The Indian-inspired Mumbai butter chicken Sâuçá is the best seller, with hunks of curried chicken and toasted cashews tucked into Lebanese-ish flatbread. The ginger- and soy-marinated pork “banh mi” is a close runner-up, the lamb and beef merguez trailing just behind that. True to its tagline, “Eat the World,” Sâuçá’s menu is clearly globally influenced, designed by a consulting company Farhad worked with to execute his ideas. The sauces—white miso soy, Thai coconut, passion fruit mayo—are in the process of being set up to be bottled, branded, and sold as far as Farhad can reach. Ditto for his “Limunad.” But first the busy businessman is getting a second round of trucks added to his fleet, which grew to four step vans only six months after Sâuçá launched in February 2010. Farhad is looking to put Sâuçás throughout the region within a year, throughout the country in two. “In my investment banking experience, the businesses that had the most value were those that created a brand, and a brand means expansion. “This,” he says, waving his arm toward his multimedia boom box/global restaurant on wheels, “is only the beginning.”
Butter Chicken Sâuçá
Serves 8
MARINATED CHICKEN
¼ cup finely minced garlic
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¾ cup plain yogurt
1¼ teaspoons chili powder
1¼ teaspoons garam masala
2 teaspoons olive oil
1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch chunks
SAUCE BASE
4½ teaspoons olive oil
1½ teaspoons tomato paste
2 cinnamon sticks
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
1 bay leaf
2 or 3 Thai green chiles
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
¼ cup water
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes
¼ teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon garam masala
¼ cup very finely chopped salted cashews
1 teaspoon ground fennel seed
SUÇÁ
1½ cups uncooked basmati rice
1½ teaspoons olive oil
¼ cup unsalted butter
¼ cup heavy cream
1½ teaspoons honey
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro, plus more for garnish
8 pieces flatbread (preferably Kronos), paratha, or roti
½ cup chopped salted, roasted cashews
To make the marinated chicken, combine the garlic, salt, yogurt, chili powder, garam masala, and olive oil and stir to combine. Pour over the chicken and seal in a large resealable bag. Let marinate in the refrigerator overnight.
To make the sauce base, heat a large, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add the olive oil, tomato paste, cinnamon sticks, cardamom, bay leaf, Thai chiles, and ginger and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the water to the pan and deglaze, scraping the pan to remove any bits stuck on the bottom. Add the tomatoes, chili powder, garam masala, cashews, and fennel seed to the pan. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the cinnamon sticks and bay leaves from the sauce, transfer the sauce to a blender, and purée. Set aside and keep warm.
To make the Sâuça, prepare the rice according to the package instructions. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Drain the marinade from the chicken and transfer the chicken to the skillet, searing on all sides until browned all over but not cooked through.
Add the reserved sauce base to the pan with the chicken and bring to a simmer for 1 minute. Add the butter, cream, honey, salt, and lime juice and simmer on low for
5 to 6 minutes. Bring the sauce to a boil, remove from the heat, and fold in the cilantro.
Spoon about ½ cup of the rice onto your favorite flatbread, top it with the chicken mixture, and garnish with the chopped cashews and cilantro. Roll the flatbread around the filling, and enjoy. Repeat to make 7 more sandwiches.
( SIDE DISH )
There’s no Pedro and there’s no Vinny at Pedro & Vinny’s. But there is John Rider, a fifteen-year veteran of the D.C. street food scene who’s famous for a few things: zipping through his perpetual block-long lunch line with the flair of a carnival barker, talking newbies into the mango-habanero “Goose sauce” he now bottles and sells, trusting customers to make their own change from a box stuffed with ones and quarters, and (this one’s most important) being the first D.C. sidewalk cart with the gumption to go through the red tape to get city approval to sell something other than hot dogs or packaged foods. John started vending in the mid-1990s with a coffee cart on the George Washington campus, but in 2000 he got the green light from the city to start selling burritos (hence the Pedro) and pasta (that would be Vinny). He chalks it up to “going through a bunch of stuff with the city and knowing how to write up standard operating procedures,” but essentially he was able to secure a vegetarian-only vending permit that lets him prepare food other than hot dogs on his cart, as long as there’s no meat involved. Fine by him—the line is long enough as it is.
( SIDE DISH )
DC Central Kitchen is all about second chances. Among other services, the nonprofit offers a program that provides culinary training for the formerly homeless and/or the recently incarcerated, which has put hundreds of cooks into D.C.’s restaurants. In hopes of turning a few of them into business owners as well, Central Kitchen launched a food cart in 2008, giving participants a taste of the owner-operator life that’s infinitely more accessible than opening a full-scale restaurant. A year later, Stir Food Group came on board, rebranding the cart as Zola on the Go (7th and F Sts. NW) and bringing in the menu of chef Bryan Moscatello, winner of a Food & Wine Best New Chef nod in 2003 for his work at the restaurant group’s flagship, Zola. Now instead of the usual lineup of hot dogs and half-smokes, employees get experience preparing items like lamb meatball sliders with grilled romaine, pepper slaw, and goat cheese aioli, plus they get the crowd that loves them.
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Fresh Local
KEEP UP WITH IT: www.freshlocaltruck.com
Plenty of people toss around the dream of escaping to a quaint small town for their own little piece of Mayberry. But Michelle Louzaway actually did it. She had a Northwestern law degree but wasn’t using it. She was living in Fargo, North Dakota, but wasn’t feeling it. She found a book on small towns, picked one, and moved to it. As it turned out, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was exactly what she was looking for. “I didn’t want to live the rest of my life shuffling my kids around in a car, never walking anywhere, living in a place where the food is all white: white flour, white sugar,” Michelle says.
So she packed up her family and moved to New Hampshire, settling in Newington, a town of fewer than a thousand people next to Portsmouth, where she got to work planting a garden, acquiring chickens for eggs, and, eventually, splitting from her husband. She worked her way through the classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking long before Julie and Julia, and even took a cooking school vacation to Julia Child’s former French château. In 2003 she bought a restaurant in downtown Portsmouth and, like many unprepared restaurateurs, she quickly learned she needed help. “My general contractor said, ‘I have a guy who can do odd jobs,’ so he brought this kid in. He was always smiling, but I thought, ‘Why is this fifteen-year-old boy smiling at me?’ ” Michelle says. “My contractor said, ‘You might want to talk to h
im. He’s actually the head chef at one of the most successful comfort food restaurants in Portsmouth, Lindbergh’s Crossing.’ ”
Michelle’s “fifteen-year-old handyman” was Josh Lanahan, a twenty-nine-year-old CIA grad with a passion for small towns, cooking local, and, it turned out, Michelle. A decade his senior, Michelle channeled her inner cougar and jumped in headfirst. The couple ran the restaurant for two years before itching to do something different. Over a bottle of Patrón one night, they decided to buy a fish taco truck for sale in Portsmouth, applying the “fresh” and “local” mantra that governed their lives to this mobile kitchen. In weeks Michelle was setting up the truck for business, while Josh went to work concocting a menu of falafel using herbs and onions from the couple’s garden, burgers made from grass-fed cows raised just up the road, and breakfast sandwiches of his own eggs, sausage from a local legend nicknamed “Popper,” and Lebanese-style pita from a nearby bakery. Wrapped and grilled to order, these took on the name “Purritos,” and they exploded in popularity when Fresh Local launched in summer 2007.
In fact, everything was a hit. So much so that the couple added a brick-and-mortar location to their plate. They kept the truck, too, and it’s become a fixture at the Prescott Park Arts Festival, a summer venue for music and plays on the banks of the Piscataqua River. But to operate the truck year-round, Michelle and Josh are looking into buying a 1940s gas station off the highway where they would park Fresh Local, construct a seating area, secure a liquor license, and create a destination out of an old, dusty lot. That’s one way to keep your town in the types of books that inspire life-changing decisions.
Josh’s Smooth & Smoky Mac & Cheese
Serves 4 to 6
1 pound elbow macaroni or corkscrew pasta
1½ teaspoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 cups half-and-half
¼ pound smoked Gouda cheese, shredded
¼ pound American cheese, shredded
¼ pound Cabot Cheddar cheese, shredded
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Cooked bacon, chopped, for garnish (optional)
Basil, cut into thin ribbons, for garnish (optional)
Fresh tomatoes, diced, for garnish (optional)
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta, and cook until just a tad mushy (as opposed to al dente). Drain, reserving the pasta water, and transfer the pasta to a large serving dish.
Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a saucepan. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until the onion is translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes and half-and-half and bring to a gentle boil. Add the cheeses, stirring until they’re thoroughly melted. Transfer the mixture to a blender and carefully purée. Pour the cheese mixture over the pasta and stir to blend. If the pasta and cheese mixture seems too dry, add a little of the reserved pasta water. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Top with the bacon, basil, and tomatoes, and serve.
INDEX
A
Abdur-Rahman, Fauzia
Aguascalientes
Alarcon, Flavio
Albizo, Jose
Algarme, Enzo
All Fired Up, 3.1, 3.2
All Natural Hot Mini Cakes
Angela’s Chocolate Pudding and Cookies
Antojitos Mexicanos la Tia Julia
Antojitos Mi Abuelita
Apples, Shaved, French Toast with Bacon Beer Brats and
The Arepa Lady, 5.1, 5.2
Arepas de Queso
Arlington, Virginia
Armstrong, Karleton
Asociación de Loncheros
Assari, Farhad
Athens Gyros
Austin, Texas, 4.1, 5.1
Azzah, Fred
B
Bacon Jam
Baitinger, Scott
Baker, Rick
Balsamic Onion Marmalade, Thomas’s
Banh Mi, Lemongrass Pork
Battle of the North Shore Shrimp Trucks
Bayer, Laura
The Bayou New Orleans
The Bay-View Pizza
Beecher’s Handmade Cheese
beef
The Bay-View Pizza
Beef Empanadas
“The Burger”
GastroPod’s Sloppy Jose
Irie Food’s Oxtail Stew
Myriam’s Yellow Burger
The Only Market Burger
Beet Salad, Rick’s F@*#ing Russian-style
Beijing Hot Noodles
Bennett’s Pure Food Bistro
Benson, Nancye
The Best Wurst
Big Gay Ice Cream Truck
Big Wave Shrimp
Blackberry Lavender Ice Pops
Blank, Jeff
Bobby Flay’s Throwdown (TV show), 4.1
Bool BBQ
Border Grill
Bork, Adam
Boston, Massachusetts
Bottger, Brian
Boucherie
Boudin Balls, Que Crawl’s
Braised Lamb Cheeks Sandwich
Brats, Bacon Beer, French Toast with Shaved Apples and
Braun, John
Brisbane, California
Brooks, Zach
Brother Bob’s Bakery
Brown Chicken Brown Cow
Bubba Bernies
Buckingham, Jaynie
Bulkogi Korean BBQ to Go
Bull City Street Vendors Rodeo
Bullfrog, Jeremiah, 4.1, 4.2
Buraka
burgers
“The Burger”
Myriam’s Yellow Burger
The Only Market Burger
Burlingame, California, 1.1, 1.2
Burmeister, Brett
Butter Chicken Sâuçá
Buttermilk, 1.1, 1.2
C
Cabral, Javier
Café Costa Rica
Calbi
California
Brisbane
Burlingame, 1.1, 1.2
Half Moon Bay
Los Angeles, fm.1, fm.2, 1.1, 1.2
North Hollywood
Oakland
Pasadena
Redwood City
San Francisco
San Jose
Venice
Cano, Maria Piedad
Capitol Square (Madison, Wisconsin)
Caracas Empanadas
Carlson, Lisa
Cartopia (Portland, Oregon), 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
Cavazos, Amanda
Cemitas Poblanas Junior’s
cheese
Arepas de Queso
The Bay-View Pizza
“The Burger”
Josh’s Smooth & Smoky Mac & Cheese
Kimchi Quesadilla
Ode to Magic Carpet’s Tofu Meatballs
The Only Market Burger
Pear Crepes
Potato Champion Poutine
Chef Shack
Chen, Macky, 1.1, 1.2
Chen, Ming-Cheng
Chen, Shao
Chen-Lu Shrimp Farm
Chez Spencer
Chicago, Illinois
chicken
Butter Chicken Sâuçá
Fojol Bros. Butter Chicken
huli huli, 1.1
Karel’s Chicken Paprikash
O’Neil’s Jerk Chicken
Rana’s Chicken Kathi Roll
Soul Patrol Buttermilk Fried Chicken
Thai Chicken Karaage, 4.1, 4.2
Chimichurri, Food Chain
China Cottage
chocolate
Angela’s Chocolate Pudding and Cookies
Pear Crepes
Choi, Roy
Chojnacki, Zbigniew “Ziggy” and Krystyna
Cincinnati, Ohio, itr.1
Clam Chowder, Sam’s New England
Coffee-braised Pork Shoulder with Chiles and Sweet Potato
Cohen, Matt
Cold Cure-All, Moxie’s
C
ole, Tyson
condiments
Bacon Jam
Food Chain Chimichurri
Rick’s F@*#ing Russian-style Beet Salad
Thomas’s Balsamic Onion Marmalade
Cookies, Angela’s Chocolate Pudding and
Crème Brûlée Cart, 1.1, 1.2
crepes
Flip Happy Crêpes
Pear Crepes
Crockett, Drew
Curry Up Now
Cutie Pie Wagon
D
Daisy Cakes
Daley, Vi
Dammeier, Kurt Beecher
The Dandelion Vegetarian and Vegan
D’Angelo’s
Day-Boykin, Andrea
DC Central Kitchen
Delicias Isabel
Deneroff, Leena
Dogfeather’s
Dolinksy, Tanna TenHoopen
Dominick’s
Dominic’s
Don Chow Tacos
Dosa, NY Dosas’ Special Rava Masala
Dosa Truck, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3
Drake, Ian
Dumplings, Karel’s
Durham, North Carolina
E
East Side King
Eat Real Festival