Midtown Lunch

After an aborted trip to the inaugural LA Street Food Festival Downtown back in February, I decided to give Profiled Lunchers Shawna and Sonja another chance on Saturday- and hit up Pasadena for their massive tasting event, featuring food trucks and street food inspired restaurants all handing out food on the field of the Rose Bowl. The lines weren’t much shorter this time around, but they moved a lot quicker (that happens when you don’t have to take money for each dish) and *most* (but not all) of the vendors seemed a bit more prepared for the crush. Plus, getting to hang on the field at the Rose Bowl while drinking beer and tequila makes waiting 30 minutes for a taco much more palatable.

Truthfully, for a guy like me even the best run tasting event is stressful. My strategy is always to get there as early as I can (buying the VIP tickets is definitely the way to go), and run from booth to booth eating as much as I can as quickly as I can before the lines get to be too long (which happens pretty quick when an event like this is sold out and thousands of people are waiting at the gate to get in at the very beginning.) Not fun, right? And it’s tough to really taste or enjoy the food. And yet something about these events keeps me going back again and again- excited for the prospect of being able to try so many places, from all over the city, in one spot, even though it’s not always a good representation of what you’d get if you went to actual truck or restaurant. After all, sometimes a great restaurant will serve up something that is not nearly as good as the food made fresh at their actual location, and bad places can easily pull it together to serve up one good bite.

And yet- despite my running, and face stuffing, one dish did manage to stand out above the rest. Not just to me, but to “The Guru” as well. And that place is now at the top of my list of must try spots…

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Nina’s Food isn’t the only vendor fighting for her survival right now… Last week City Council Member Tom LaBonge proposed two motions that would severely limit food trucks’ ability to find parking in Los Angeles. LaBonge represents the district that includes the area in front of 5700 Wilshire where tons of trucks park every day for lunch. The SoCal Mobile Food Vendors Association has already sprung into action, creating a petition, a Facebook page and listing the City Council members who you can email. Don’t think it will make a difference? The same exact kind of parking law is making its way through the City Council in New York city, and it looks the massive outpouring of support for the food trucks might have made the difference in a hearing that was held yesterday.

If you love Food Trucks, and don’t want to see them go away, now is the time to act.  Sign the petition now.

The Summer version of the LA Street Food Fest has been announced, and from the sounds of things it will be far smoother than the inaugural event this past Feburary.  The completely redesigned “Tasting Event” is being held at the Rose Bowl, July 24th from 5:30 to 9pm. Tickets are $45 and all inclusive, or you can buy a VIP pass for $65 that gets you in at 4pm. They’re also hoping to cut down on the lines by taking the 60 or so participating vendors out of their food trucks and putting them at tables.  There will also be bands, a beer garden, and cocktails from L.A. area mixologists.  Plus the event has taken a page from the Vendy Award playbook, and will have a panel of judges to hand out random awards to the trucks (Susan Feniger has already been announced.)   As long as the line to get in is shorter that’s all I care about… don’t want to end up at Philippe’s again! Get more info, and buy your tickets, here>>

Related:
PROFILE: L.A. Lunch’ers “Shawna & Sonja” (aka the Co-Founders of the L.A. Street Food Festival)

I miss you old friend

When I returned to Los Angeles in January I was pretty excited to start eating my way through all the trucks that have popped up since I moved away in 2005.  Korean tacos? Hawaiian garlic shrimp? Grilled cheese sandwiches with short ribs? Sushi… buttermilk biscuits… butter chicken… and obviously all the Mexican food.  But there is one thing that the L.A. street food scene doesn’t have… street meat!  If you’ve ever been to NYC you know what I’m talking about… the “halal” chicken and lamb (aka gyro) over rice with white sauce (aka mayo) and hot sauce.

The results of Street Meat Palooza 3 were released today on the Midtown NYC section of Midtown Lunch (our annual 15 cart street meat showdown) and I have to say it’s the one thing I miss about New York that has no L.A. substitute.  With all the trucks out here, I can’t believe nobody has done this.  You’d think there are enough NYC transplants to make it profitable, right?   Challenge issued.  Will anybody step up to the plate?  Or maybe we can get one of the New York vendors to follow in Le Gamin’s footsteps.

Since I moved here from NYC in January I’ve been attacking the street food scene like a man who hasn’t eaten in a year (a starving yet incomprehensibly fat man.) The debate over what city has the best street food in the U.S. is too much for me to take on today, but there is one thing I have noticed- despite all the difficulties trucks in this city face every day, it is still far easier to operate a truck in Los Angeles than in New York. And to prove it, the popular Le Gamin Truck (an offshoot of the constantly in flux chain of small NYC bistros) has just spent the past week driving cross country to set up shop in sunny Los Angeles.

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For lunch purposes I have a love hate relationship with sushi.  On one hand I don’t feel like anybody should ever have to spend more than $10 for lunch.  On the other hand, oftentimes (though not always) you get what you pay for- and that tenet is never more true than it is with sushi.  It is practically impossible to get a filling sushi lunch for under $10 (the keyword is filling), and when we do find one- it’s usually the kind of place that makes people cringe.  (Like New York City sushi from a drugstore.  Or a 99 Cent Store.)

So, naturally, when I moved to Los Angeles fans of the site (here and in NYC) wanted me to continue the Midtown Lunch tradition of sushi “bravery”.  And here that means eating sushi from a truck!

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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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