Midtown Lunch

Remember how excited I was to find real jerk chicken, stewed oxtails, and goat stew on the Kassava Truck back in April?  Well, apparently Los Angeles wasn’t as excited because the trucks are now gone, pulled off the street months ago.  Kassava the restaurant is still open over in Beverly Hills (8600 W. 3rd Street) but the trucks just weren’t making enough money to be worthwhile.   But that’s not the end of the story… last month the guy who ran the Kassava Trucks decided to strike out on his own, opening the Tropical Food Truck and parking it near 5858 Wilshire Blvd.  He’s also added some Haitian specialties to the menu, and claims that his mom is the chef of Kassava (and helps him cook the food) so the Jamaican stuff should be exactly the same as the original Kassava truck.

Clearly somebody was going to need to test this out.

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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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