Food Trucks

by Heather Shouse

  “We bought the truck from an Egyptian guy in the fall of 2008, and I know we need to fix up the front of the truck, but we just don’t have the time or money,” says Tanguito’s owner, Steven Rodriguez Mares. “But it’s more important to us that our truck is clean and that the food is good.”

  That it is. Steven picked up pointers at the stove from his mother growing up in Buenos Aires, while his father ran a bar and grill called Las Marinas. However, he’s quick to remind anyone who will listen that he’s not a chef. He cooks food the way he likes to eat it: simply seasoned with salt and pepper, with a minimal number of ingredients. Steven, who moved to the United States in 2000, had never worked in a kitchen (although he did work as a server for about a year), and until the food truck idea came to him he supported his wife, Bettina, and his two daughters by driving a taxi, which he still does from about six at night until two in the morning, five days a week.

  “We are open only during the day right now, and no, we aren’t making any real money, but it doesn’t really matter to me,” Steven says. “I found something that my family can all do at the same time. The children can be here, Bettina is here … I love it.”

  As he says this, the Saturday afternoon rush is dying down and Bettina is inside the truck assessing the stock of empanadas, her contribution to the menu, while eight-year-old Zoe and three-year-old Lara sit quietly on little stools in front of the truck’s reach-in cooler, coloring pictures of horses and rainbows. Steven says Zoe likes to help and sometimes pitches in by cleaning shrimp; she once made paella with only a little help from Dad when it came to igniting the grill. Fire is a borderline obsession of Steven’s. When he talks about how he swapped out the truck’s flat-top grill for a gas-powered grate grill, his eyes light up as he mimics the flames needed to cook his signature beef ribs. Steven also handles the burgers, hand-cuts the fries, grills the Italian-style sausage for the choripan, and prepares shellfish paella in a wok in about twenty minutes. And even though the truck was Steven’s big idea, Bettina decided that if they were going to serve food from their homeland, they needed empanadas. “In Argentina, they have an empanada shop on every block, and when you want them you can just go there or they’ll even deliver,” Bettina says. “So actually, when I lived there, I never made them myself. But when we moved to America, Steven’s mother gave me a classic Argentinean cookbook because she knew I would have to cook here, and I took the dough recipe from that, but for the fillings there are no recipes. It’s just common sense, very simple, what we like to eat. How we cook on the truck is how we cook in life, so of course we cook for people the same way we would cook for ourselves. What other way?”

  Beef Empanadas

  Makes about 12 empanadas

  4¼ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

  1½ teaspoons salt

  ½ cup margarine, at room temperature

  ¾ cup water

  2 tablespoons corn oil

  3 onions, diced

  3 cloves garlic, minced

  1 pound ground beef

  ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  1 tablespoon chopped fresh Italian parsley

  1½ teaspoons chopped fresh oregano

  ½ cup diced roasted red bell pepper

  ¼ cup chopped green olives

  2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped

  1 tablespoon raisins (optional)

  1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

  Preheat the oven to 450°F. Grease a baking sheet and sprinkle flour over it.

  In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour with 1 teaspoon of the salt, 6 tablespoons of the margarine, and the water, stirring with a spoon and then using your hands to thoroughly blend the dough. Roll the dough out to a thickness of ¼ inch, then spread the remaining 2 tablespoons margarine on the dough’s surface. Lightly sprinkle the dough with flour, fold it in half and then in half again, and then roll it out again to a thickness of 1/16 inch. Cut out about 12 circles from the dough using a 5-inch ring mold.

  Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, then add the onions and the garlic. Stir in the ground beef and season with the remaining ½ teaspoon salt, pepper, parsley, and oregano. When the beef is lightly browned, add the bell pepper. Increase the heat and cook, stirring constantly, until the beef is fully cooked. Let cool and then stir in the olives, hard-cooked eggs, and raisins. Put 2 tablespoons of the filling in the middle of each dough circle and fold the dough in half to form a half-moon, pressing the edges together firmly and pinching them all around or pressing them with the tines of a fork to seal. Place the empanadas on a the prepared baking sheet and brush them with the egg yolk. Bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.

  ( SAN FRANCISCO’S UNDERGROUND FOOD CART REVOLUTION )

  A cluster of hipsters of all stripes streaming in and out of an art gallery on a Saturday night is a fairly common sight in San Francisco’s Mission District. But at Olivia Ongpin’s Fabric8 Gallery, there’s also often a guy out front cooking Thai curries in propane-fueled woks mounted to a cruiser bike’s sidecar. Next to him is another guy using a three-foot metal pipe as the bellows to stoke the fire inside his “FrankenWeber,” a twenty-two-inch Weber kettle grill on wheels that he’s turned into a pizza oven by constructing a concrete dome to contain the heat of flaming hardwood charcoal.

  Magic Curry Kart and the Pizza Hacker are the most visually arresting of the carts that have been roaming San Francisco’s streets since the scene took hold in 2009, but wind your way through Fabric8 (taking notice of the pop-surrealism art on the walls while you go, of course) and you’ll land in a lush backyard that is turned into a veritable food-cart court nearly every week. Under the branches of a giant oak, using a small flood lamp for a work light, Curtis Kimball of the Crème Brûlée Cart looks every bit the part of a professional pastry chef, clad in starched chef whites and cartoonish toque, carefully sprinkling a fine layer of sugar onto palm-size vanilla custard cups and brûléeing them with a small torch. There’s a line of about twenty people and it’s nearing 10 p.m., but the cart closes only when the last crème brûlée is gone.

  A rotating lineup of food carts bearing everything from barbecue to cookies is invited to Fabric8 on an almost weekly basis (www.fabric8.blogspot.com), so technically these mobile chefs aren’t breaking any rules since they’re on private property. But when a handful of the carts have teamed up for an impromptu food fest in a park, on a random street corner, or even in a back alley, that’s when the fuzz has occasionally intervened. For the most part, the cart owners say that the city hasn’t cracked down too hard by ticketing or fining, even though nearly all are operating without permits or licenses. Still, over the course of the movement, many cart owners have become a bit more careful where they go and when. Twitter has always been the preferred method of announcing pop-up locations, and the Health Department has no doubt figured out how to use their computer, but the roving crew seems undeterred, most intent on operating underground, both to sidestep the red-tape headache of going legit and also in the age-old San Francisco spirit of sticking it to the man.

  Tracking the carts on Twitter takes little more than connecting the dots: start at feeds like @cremebruleecart, @magiccurrykart, and @pizzahacker.com and you’ll quickly see other tweets from cart associates like Gobba Gobba Hey, Sexy Soup Cart, Lumpia Cart, Gumbo Cart, and Soul Cocina (technically not a cart, but in the same spirit nonetheless). Just remember that while most of the food tastes on par with that of the pros, these are not streamlined restaurant operations, so go with the flow, expect a bit of a wait, and don’t go looking for a manager if you arrive to the front of the line to be met by that dreaded phrase, “Sold out.”

  Oahu, Hawaii

  Lunch wagons, as they’re known, are so cemented into Hawaiian culture that if you ask a native to recount his or her first meal at one, the response usually starts with, “Well, my dad had this one favorite …” Even city officials (whose Department of Health records for mobile food vendors go back only to 1996) recall the trucks as “bei
ng around forever,” tracing their origins to the early 1900s, when mobile canteens cruised the island’s many military bases to feed soldiers. By the 1960s Honolulu started to emerge as Oahu’s business hub, with enterprising home cooks loading classic Hawaiian “plate lunches” onto delivery trucks and driving them to construction sites to feed hungry workers responsible for building up the downtown area. Over time, as nine-to-fivers started to fill the jobs being created, they, too, got in line for home-style eats either rooted in Hawaiian tradition (kalua pork, laulau, poi) or influenced by Hawaii’s sizable Asian population (pork katsu, teriyaki beef, chicken long rice, Korean-style short ribs). These plate lunches look exactly the same today as they did decades ago: two heaping scoops of white rice and a scoop of macaroni salad topped with whatever protein floats your boat. Somewhere along the way a small salad crept into the container, done at some trucks as a cabbage-lettuce blend, at others as a few leaves of iceberg drizzled with Thousand Island dressing.

  By the 1990s tourism had taken the lead as Hawaii’s main source of revenue, and as buses loaded with camera-toting tourists eventually headed beyond the high-rise hotels on Waikiki to the beautiful beaches of the North Shore, shrimp farmers began to figure out that selling their catch wholesale wasn’t the only market. Dilapidated shuttle buses, many retired from resorts or the airport, got tropical makeovers on the outside and jury-rigged kitchens on the inside. Many of these shrimp trucks set up only a few feet from their shrimp ponds, between the coast and Kamehameha Highway, the main artery from Honolulu to the North Shore. The Bonzai Pipeline at Ehukai Beach had already been discovered by international surfers seeking massive waves during the 1960s, and these penny-pinching drifters proved to be loyal customers for shrimp trucks when tourist season was at its low (quick surf lesson: Hawaii’s waves are biggest in November and December).

  After recording about fifteen years at a steady number, Department of Health supervisor Peter Oshiro saw Hawaii’s lunch wagons nearly double from 2007 to 2008, followed by another 30 percent increase from 2008 to 2009, with a current count of over two hundred. Speculation among truck owners is that the recession inspired many would-be restaurateurs to think smaller and go mobile. But ask Macky Chan of the North Shore shrimp truck Macky’s and he points to his truck’s appearance on Lost as key to the spike. Egocentric? Maybe, but sixteen million viewers can’t exactly hurt business.

  North Shore Shrimp Trucks

  Macky’s Kuhuku Sweet Shrimp (66–632 Kamehameha Hwy.)

  Big Wave Shrimp (66–521 Kamehameha Hwy.) Just next door to the hippified One Love Surf Shop you’ll find more good vibes at this chill shrimp truck, a colorful converted tour bus run by Thai native Kawita Stacy, who’s as sweet as she is hospitable. Towering trees, a few picnic tables, and a front-row seat to Haleiwa’s main drag makes for a nice spot to spend an hour crunching on crispy coconut shrimp, then slurping up sweet shave ice.

  Giovanni’s II (66–460 Kamehameha Hwy.) The newer Haleiwa sibling of the Kahuku institution shares a serene shaded lot with a couple of other food trucks, including Opal Thai (see Side Dish), which gives Giovanni’s a run for its money when it comes to bustling business. Giovanni’s might be a newer spinoff, but it’s battered and plastered with graffiti just the same, and the garlic-laden shrimp is a dead ringer for the tasty stuff the original has been serving for years (although if you’re in these parts, you might as well keep going south to Macky’s).

  Tony’s Kahuku Shrimp (56–775 Kamehameha Hwy.) Somewhat overshadowed by nearby Fumi’s and nearly hidden by its own tarp shelter covering a handful of picnic tables, Tony’s has a decade of experience to its credit, and the Taiwanese father-daughter team running it makes every effort to stand apart from the crowd. Regulars bring beer to fan the flames from the sweet-and-spicy “lava” shrimp, which, like the entire lineup here, are served head on and in the shell for extra flavor. Not hungry? Cool off with lychee iced tea or homemade pineapple ice cream.

  Fumi’s Kahuku Shrimp (56–777 Kamehameha Hwy.) The romantic sunset splashed across the side of this truck takes a bit of poetic license on the real deal, but at least you know exactly what you’re getting when it comes to the shrimp—it comes from the ponds adjacent to the parking lot. Unlike most of its competition, Fumi’s takes the time to devein (a bonus for the squeamish), plus they offer a marriage of popular styles with their garlic-spicy shrimp. For something subtler, go for the stuff that’s peeled and sautéed with fistfuls of fresh ginger slivers.

  Famous Kahuku Shrimp Truck (56–580 Kamehameha Hwy.) About a tail-toss away from the throngs crowding Giovanni’s you’ll find this local favorite, a bit more low-key and staffed by folks who seem genuinely appreciative of your business. Maybe that’s why they let patrons mix-and-match, handing over plates half piled with garlic shrimp and half piled with a chile sauce–glazed spicy version. Both are good, but the plump guys that are lightly battered in the style of Chinese salt-and-pepper shrimp are the standout.

  Giovanni’s Aloha Shrimp (56–505 Kamehameha Hwy.) Just past Romy’s shrimp ponds and their roadside shrimp hut (not on wheels, so not in this book) you’ll spot this graffiti-splattered truck, perpetually mobbed by tourists who’ve heard about the media darling and come for a taste. Going on nearly two decades, Giovanni’s is the original truck of the North Shore shrimp scene, slinging a few hundred plates of fat, garlic butter–drenched crustaceans daily. The “hot & spicy” is no joke, so go at your own risk.

  Shrimp Shack (53–360 Kamehameha Hwy.) Driving south down the “windward,” or eastern, side of the island the crowds thin, the air feels even fresher, but the food options become few and far between. Enter Irene Theofanis’s surfboard-clad, banana-yellow shrimp truck, beckoning to travelers with its upscale menu of beer-steamed mussels, rock crab cakes, and mahi smothered in grilled onions. Snap out of the food coma with a Kona Iceberg, fresh-brewed coffee poured over vanilla ice cream.

  Macky’s Kahuku Sweet Shrimp

  FIND IT: 66–632 Kamehameha Hwy., Haleiwa, Hawaii

  “Go big or go home.” So proclaims the sticker slapped onto a battered surfboard leaning up against a truck parked along Kamehameha Highway, the main artery of Hawaii’s North Shore. The slogan is referring to waves, of course, the bigger the better here on the island home to the famed surf spot known as the Bonzai Pipeline, host to the sport’s toughest competitions each winter when twenty-foot waves roll in.

  Macky Chen doesn’t surf. But he knows surfers, knows their lingo, and knows how they like their shrimp. Macky runs one of the dozen or so shrimp trucks that dot the Kamehameha Highway, some of which have been feeding surfers and tourists alike since the ’80s. Trucks have come and gone, but Macky’s—a relative newcomer open only since 2004—has a cult following throughout the island of Oahu. A second-generation shrimp trucker and the son of a shrimp farmer, Macky abides by two laws: the secret is not in the sauce. And the shrimp, like the waves, have gotta be big.

  Once the Taiwanese military got their required service out of him, Macky’s father, Ming-Cheng Chen, decided he’d had enough of his homeland and set sail for Hawaii with his family in tow. This was the mid-’90s, and the Hawaiian aquaculture business had been booming for a decade: the world wanted seaweed and shrimp, and Hawaii knew just how to raise them. Ming-Cheng decided that a bit of reading material, advice from friends, and some start-up money was all he needed to dive headfirst into the aquaculture world. And just like that, he was a shrimp farmer.

  Chen-Lu Shrimp Farm (Macky’s mother, Hualien Lu, is the other half of both the farm and its name) sold its first crop in 1995, carving out a niche by raising only Pacific white shrimp and only selling them live. To hear Macky tell it, “Pacific white have to be raised in saltwater, and no matter what people tell you about freshwater or prawns or anything else, you don’t believe them, because these shrimp have meat that’s sweeter and more tender than anything. It’s a very different flavor, so you don’t need seasoning; you don’t even need to cook it.”

  Funny thin
g about those surfers and tourists: they like their shrimp cooked. So after nearly a decade of Ming-Cheng haggling with wholesalers over the price per pound and Macky manning the nearby shrimp stand—bagging up big, fat Pacific whites to hand over to Hawaiian housewives stocking up for dinner—the matriarch of the family laid out her own plan: cook the shrimp and sell it. Sure, the competition among North Shore shrimp trucks is stiff, but so is the shrimp farming business. And those other guys don’t have Chen-Lu Pacific whites and Hualien Lu’s way with cooking them.

  The Chens got their hands on an old shuttle bus that barely ran, but it didn’t really need to. They outfitted it with a full kitchen—range, fryer, fridge, sink—found a spot to park it, popped out a side window to serve as the pass-through for finished plates, and plastered the menu onto the door. Alongside two-foot-tall letters that read “Macky’s,” a giant red hand-painted shrimp looms over the window for placing orders, almost daring customers to request it and its kind. Macky’s Kahuku Sweet Shrimp opened for business in 2004 (“It’s Chinese tradition to name a business for the son,” Macky explains, “but really it is their truck first”). The next year the crispy coconut shrimp won the Battle of the North Shore Shrimp Trucks, a not entirely friendly competition organized by Turtle Bay Resorts. Legend has it (according to Macky, at least) that after this newcomer walked away with first prize, pressure from an established shrimp truck or two convinced Turtle Bay Resorts to retire the contest. In essence, Macky’s is the one and only champion of the Battle of the North Shore Shrimp Trucks.