Archive for '5700 Wilshire'

New Kassava Truck Brings Real Jamaican Food to the Streets (Where it Belongs)

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I found it hard to mask my disappointment when I tried the Reggae Jerk Chicken truck for the first time last month.  I was hoping for some real, down home Jamaican food from a truck (think: oxtails, stew peas, curry goat, and jerk chicken on the bone).  Instead, I was treated to a mall food court version Carribean food; boneless chicken chunks, covered in some sort of sweet sauce, served atop a white rice and black bean mixture.  I salvaged the meal by stuffing plantains into a jerk chicken burrito, but my quest for real Jamaican food from a truck was not satisfied… until yesterday, when I stumbled upon the one week old Kassava Truck on Miracle Mile.

That’s right!  A… new… truck.  (Actually, trucks. There are two of them.) What a shocker.  But before you roll your eyes and exclaim to the heavens “will this insanity ever end?!”, let me just say this: I stuffed my face at this truck yesterday (as a regular customer, not at some kind of “blogger preview”), and it was hands down one of the best meals from a truck I’ve had since moving to L.A. (especially if you like oxtail and goat.)

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Burger Truck Showdown: Baby’s Badass vs. Grill ‘Em All

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I’ve been craving a burger since the day I got here (this city has some good burgers) and I thought long and hard about what I wanted my first burger in L.A. to be. Would I go old school at the Apple Pan, or new school at the Oinkster.  Would I splurge on Umami Burger, or go cheap at Capitol Burgers. And then of course there’s In N Out Burger, but I ruled that one out pretty quickly.  If an In N Out opened up in Manhattan it would be the greatest, most exciting day in Midtown Lunch’ing history… but here in L.A., a new In N Out Burger is like a new Starbucks (and therefore not a Midtown Lunch.)

It was a tough choice, and in the end I went for… none of the above!  I know it’s terrible, but if there’s one thing I like more than burgers it’s food trucks… so when I randomly found myself outside of Baby’s Badass Burgers the other day, I couldn’t resist trying it out.

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Dim Sum Truck Has “Tough” Opening Day

The Dim Sum Truck

I love street food and covered it with Rain Man like precision in NYC, but at this point I feel like there is little left that would surprises me in the new school food truck scene.  Grilled cheese?  Sure.  Peruvian food?  Why not.  Asian food in taco form from a truck whose name rhymes with “kogi”? Uh… yeah.  In other words, just when I thought I couldn’t get excited anymore, a new truck goes and gets me all super giddy. Dim sum… my all time favorite food…  from a truck? Here we go.

For a white guy I consider myself fairly well versed in the ways of dim sum.  I don’t know the Chinese name for anything (besides shu mai and har gow), and still resort to pointing… but I have a pretty general idea what most things are (based on experience, shape, color, etc.)  I like the giant places, where pandemonium rules and you might have to stalk items across long distances (like a hunter with a punch card in place of a spear.)   I like carts, and lots of them (dim sum that you have to order off a menu is not real dim sum imo.)  And to the delight of most dim sum cart pushers, this short fat Jewish guy loves chicken feet.  I also know that in New York, if you want good dim sum you go to Brooklyn (or maybe even Flushing… but never Manhattan.)  And in L.A. dim sum fans all head east to the (at this point incredibly well known) San Gabriel Valley.

In other words, if you want awesome “dim sum” you’re clearly not going to get it from a truck parked in Santa Monica!  And yet there I was yesterday, “punch card” in hand,  as excited as I possibly could be to try the brand new “Dim Sum Truck”.  And you know why?  Because we don’t work in Monterrey Park.

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India Jones’ Butter Chicken is a Force to Be Reckoned With

India Jones

Midtown Lunch: LA has been up and running for 2 weeks now, and not a single post about street food? Embarrassing… so on Friday I set to rectify the situation by heading to the new Downtown food truck food court on S Alameda and Traction run by the SoCal MFVA. I was excited to try India Jones, which had been recommended by Lunch’er Damara during my last week of lunching in NYC. I’m a huge fan of the kati roll (an Indian burrito/soft taco of sorts popular on the streets of Kolkata), and was worried that moving to L.A. would end my affair with the Indian street snack I had come to know and love.

Is there anything this city doesn’t have!?

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