by Maurene Goo
We walked down our hilly street filled with duplexes, old Craftsman homes, and small apartment complexes like ours. Just a block down, we hit Echo Park Avenue, one of the main drags in our neighborhood. Palms and mature jacaranda trees lined the street where the beginning of commuter traffic passed by. A coffee shop was already bustling with hipster moms pushing strollers. Right across the street was a little liquor store in a strip mall where two workers were changing shifts for the day—the one off duty getting into his ancient Toyota Corolla, the car protesting with a groan when it started.
While we were waiting on the corner for the light to turn green, a homeless white man sporting a full head of snowy hair and wearing a soccer jersey walked up to us.
My dad held up a hand. “Jerry, I don’t have cash today.”
Jerry cackled, his blue eyes flashing with good humor before he spat onto the sidewalk. “Maybe not you, but Clara here?”
I shook my head. “I wish. I’m about to spend my entire summer working on this guy’s food truck.”
“Bummer,” he said. Jerry used to be a bike messenger in the 1960s. One too many concussions brought him to our neighborhood streets, but he claimed he loved the “yokeless life.”
My dad promised him some food when we were done at the end of the day, and we crossed the street. A couple of blocks later, we passed by my favorite fruit stand, a rainbow-umbrella-adorned cart run by a middle-aged Latina woman named Kara who sliced fruit, then tossed it with lime juice and chili powder. Fruit crack, basically.
“Bom dia, Adrian,” she said with a wink.
He winked back at her. “Buenos días, Kara.”
I rolled my eyes as we walked past. “You’re like freaking Mr. Rogers of Echo Park.”
“That reminds me, been thinking of getting a cardigan.”
I stopped in my tracks. “WHAT?”
My dad kept walking, pulling on his mirrored Wayfarers. “No, Shorty, they’re cool now.”
I kicked a purple jacaranda blossom. “Cool for grandpas like you.”
“When are you gonna learn that I’m just innately cool?” He had the nerve to do a little spin. My dad used to be a break-dancer back in the day; it’s how he got my mom’s attention. With his sweet moves.
My feet flew as I walked ahead of him. “New rule: you must always walk five feet away from me.”
But that only got me to the commissary quicker—and waiting for us, standing in the middle of the parking lot holding a giant Starbucks cup, was Rose Carver.
CHAPTER 6
“Right on time, atta girl!” my dad bellowed, raising his hand for a high five.
Rose awkwardly held up her hand, and he slapped it with gusto. Then she swept her eyes down to her feet, looking away shyly. God. Everyone crushed on my dad. It was so offensive.
We didn’t greet each other. I looked at her outfit, though—sweat shorts over a black bodysuit. She caught me looking at her and said, “What?” Then she adjusted her hair. “Because of this punishment, I have to squeeze in a barre in the morning.”
“Whatever that means,” I said with a yawn.
My dad interrupted us. “Okay right, shorties, here’s the deal. Today’s going to be KoBra 101. We’re gonna go over all the basics, and you’ll also shadow me to get a feel for what a normal day is like. Understood?”
I nodded at the same time Rose replied, “Yes,” in a nice, clear voice. Teacher’s pet until the end.
My dad spread his arms wide. “This mild-mannered parking lot is actually what we food truck people call a commissary. It’s where we park our trucks, plug in for the night, dump out our oil, clean up the trucks, refill our ice, and even keep some of our food in the industrial kitchen back there.” He pointed to a small concrete building in the corner of the lot. The rest of the lot was closed in on three sides by tall pine trees. Although I had never formally worked the KoBra, I’d visited the truck and the commissary plenty of times. With all the truck stuff dumped out here, it was kind of gross, but I always liked it anyway—it felt tucked away from the rest of the city.
“Rose, can you find the KoBra?” Pai asked, arms crossed.
Setting this up like a pop quiz was wise. Rose’s eyes lit up as she inspected the four trucks parked neatly against one of the walls of trees.
She instantly zeroed in on the black one. My dad nodded. “You got it. Let’s go over and introduce you to her.”
I hated when my dad gendered the stupid truck. To retaliate, I called my boobs Brock and Chad, which my dad hated with equal fervor.
We walked over, and Rose’s mouth dropped open slightly.
The truck was painted a glossy black, and an illustration of a coiled snake sat beneath pink neon letters that spelled out THE KOBRA. The headlights were painted to look like menacing eyes, and the grille was a mouth. Gleaming gold. The first time I’d seen it, I felt an intense wave of secondhand embarrassment very specific to kids with parents who tried to be cool.
“Wow,” Rose managed to utter.
My dad beamed. “Isn’t she just completely rad?”
No, Pai, you are not innately cool.
“Very … eye-catching!” She was good, that one.
“If you want your eye to catch gonorrhea,” I muttered. The truck only seated two people, so we got into Rose’s car to trek to a few different markets to pick up produce: onions, parsley, garlic, green onions, red pepper, tomato, and pear. The KoBra did supply pickups Mondays and Fridays and kept most of the ingredients in the commissary kitchen before we prepped on the truck. Thank God that on most non-supply days we started prepping around nine a.m.
“Couldn’t we get this stuff from like, Vons?” I asked as we stopped at one of the markets in East Hollywood’s Thai town. It was a tiny one, owned by a woman listening to a loud Thai talk show on the radio while ignoring us.
My dad pressed a bunch of green onions to his chest in mock horror. “It’s all about keeping it local and authentic LA. Vons … whose daughter are you?” He was always saying stuff like “local” and “sustainable” and a plethora of other foodie words that I liked to parrot back at him while munching on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
Then we hit up Korean and Salvadoran butcher shops for cuts of beef rump and various pork parts. We even went to an Indian market in Atwater Village to pick up spices. It was tedious and never-ending.
Rose, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough. She was fascinated by every store, every stop. Taking notes in a little notepad.
“Have you ever been to Los Angeles, California?” I asked her as she marveled at the row upon row of teas at India Sweets & Spices.
She threw me a withering glance. “God, Clara, will I ever be as cool as you?”
My dad called us back to the car before I could respond, letting Rose have the last word.
After we’d gone to every single grocery store in the county, we went back to the commissary. We had about an hour and a half before our first stop of the day—a bustling coffee shop in Silver Lake. “Okay, shorties. We’re going to actually make food now. You ready?” my dad asked us. He was wielding a large butcher knife and wearing a KoBra apron.
Rose pulled out her notebook again. “Yes.” But she started taking these weird shallow breaths. Probably some, like, control exercise that Sheryl Sandberg or someone recommended in order to be bossier. Before I could make fun of her for it, my dad looked at me pointedly. I made a face. “I don’t need notes for this.”
I waited for Rose’s snippy retort, but she was staring down at her notebook, her mouth moving silently as she read. Well, well, well, Queen Carver actually felt unsure about this. I, however, felt fully confident. The quicker I figured all this out, the quicker I could get it over with and prove to my dad that I had learned my lesson and blah blah. Tulum was still very much a possibility.
The KoBra had two main dishes:
• Picanha (beef rump) grilled on skewers (in the Brazilian style of churrasco) in traditional Korean galbi marinade
• Lombo (pork loin)
grilled churrasco-style with a spicy vinaigrette sauce (similar to pico de gallo)
There were also various pickled veggies (very Korean) that you could add as a side, homemade beverages like lime caldo de cana (sugarcane juice with lime added), and a kimchi-and-cheese-stuffed pastel—a traditional Brazilian pastry. That was my personal favorite.
It was all delicious, actually.
“Okay, so we already have the meat on for lunch,” my dad said, pointing at the skewered pieces of beef roasting over the small grill. In addition to the grill, the truck had a griddle top, two burners, and an oven. There was no AC in here, so the truck’s roof had windows for ventilation, and my dad had installed a fan in the corner. And, as expected, the truck was already turning into a mini greenhouse. I felt a drop of sweat roll down my forehead, and I glared at Rose, because everything was her fault.
The picanha would be sliced off as it was cooked so that the pieces served were never stale. My dad continued, “But we’re going to prep the meats for tonight.”
He had us prepare the galbi marinade for the beef: mixing together soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, loads of garlic, sesame seeds, Korean chili powder, onion, ginger, and thin slices of pear. “You get me the ingredients and I’ll mix,” I ordered Rose.
She put a hand on her hip. “Excuse me?”
“This is my dad’s truck; I have seniority.”
A throat cleared right behind me. “Excuse me?” my dad asked.
I closed my eyes. This was going to be a pain in the butt every step of the way.
“You two are equals. There’s no seniority, you kidding me?” My dad tapped the rim of my hat so that it fell over my eyes.
Rose grabbed a metal bowl and whisk. “You probably know where everything is, so doesn’t it make sense for you to get the ingredients?”
“She has a point there,” my dad said, not able to hide his glee.
Once Rose finished blending everything together, my dad placed the beef rump in a giant metal bowl, then poured the marinade over it. “This is for later. We already have some marinated meat for the next stop. I’ll leave this here until after this stop, and we’ll come back for it and start roasting. It needs at least three hours to marinate.” He sealed the bowl shut with plastic wrap, then took it to the giant commissary fridge.
He believed in making the marinades fresh, the day of. “It would probably be more flavorful if we made a large batch and kept it for a long time, but I like the freshness of the marinade in contrast to the roasted meats. It’s different,” he said as he handed me the ingredients for the vinaigrette: onions, tomatoes, parsley, vinegar, olive oil, and bell peppers. Rose was jotting all this down, her cap and apron impeccably placed. She looked like she was attending the Harvard of food truck schools.
“May I please make the sauce?” I asked her, waving a wooden spoon in front of her.
She shrugged. “Sure, I’m fair.”
Gritting my teeth, I mixed the ingredients in yet another large metal bowl. From what I could tell, everything in the KoBra was made in a giant metal bowl—the kind that older Korean ladies, ahjummas, use to make vats of kimchi. My dad’s Korean-ness always came out in these stealth ways that I don’t think even he noticed.
Last were the pasteis. These had been my favorite, ever since I was a kid. They were deep-fried hand pies—half-moon shapes with crinkled edges for the KoBra’s version. Traditionally, in Brazil, they were stuffed with various meats like ground beef and chicken, or cheese and veggies, and sold on the street. My dad put a twist on tradition by stuffing them with kimchi and cheese. When my dad had first made them a few years ago, I was seriously grossed out. Kimchi and cheese? In a pastel? But once I had taken a bite of the melty, crispy goodness, I was a convert. And now, it was what the KoBra was known for.
The pastry dough had been premade by my dad. He put his hands on his hips. “Are you guys going to fight about who rolls out the dough?”
Rose and I looked at each other.
“You can do it,” I said magnanimously.
Rose smiled, tight-lipped with dead eyes. “No, after you.”
“No, you.”
My dad sighed and took off his cap. “You’re trying my patience here. Rose, your turn.”
Ha! I hated rolling out dough—whenever my dad made pies I skipped that step. It was always so hard to make it a nice circle shape without the delicate edges falling apart on you.
Rose drew a deep breath and took the rolling pin from my dad. He guided her a bit as she rolled out the dough on the metal countertop, then cut out circle shapes with a metal ring the size of a dessert plate. She messed up at first—the dough breaking off when she rolled it out. I could sense that she was keeping her immense frustration under wraps, but her teeth practically bit holes into her bottom lip. She eventually got it right, but you could tell it kept bothering her. Jeez.
My dad let me have the honor of tossing handfuls of shredded mozzarella into each circle. After that, I laid thin strips of kimchi on top of the cheese, adding a small cube of butter at the end before folding the dough over. My dad popped the pasteis into the oven, where they would bake for a bit before being deep-fried.
In an hour everything would be ready, fresh and piping hot for the customers.
“Not so bad, huh?” my dad asked with a grin, tossing a dish towel at me.
I shrugged, deliberately missing the towel and letting it fall to the floor by my feet. Rose picked it up with the end of her fingertips and tossed it into the sink.
“Butt-kisser,” I muttered. My dad shook his head and settled into the driver’s seat.
CHAPTER 7
Usually, the KoBra had two to three stops a day, and it was in business every day of the week. During the school year, when my dad had Vivian and other part-time workers, he would have days off. But this summer, it was just the three of us, and we’d each have to work at least five days out of every week.
On weekdays, the first stop was always from ten a.m. to two p.m. and, depending on the day, we’d either go to a coffee shop or some workplace, like an office park or movie studio. Our evening shift began at five p.m., and we usually stopped at various bars or events in the city, like farmers markets or festivals. Fridays and Saturdays were always coffee shops in the day and events at night. Sunday evening was the only time the KoBra took a break.
Although it was Monday, my dad decided to keep it to one stop because so much of today would be taken up by our training.
I rode with Pai in the truck and Rose met us at the location, a coffee shop called Wildfox, which was completely packed in the middle of a weekday. Everyone was on their laptops, and no one looked like they were over the age of thirty. “Does anyone in this town work anymore?” I grumbled as I pulled on my cap.
Rose almost elbowed me putting on her KoBra shirt over her body suit. “It’s called freelancing.”
“And it’s called sarcasm, you humorless bag,” I snapped.
“What?!” Rose yelped.
My dad stepped between us. “Are you two going to get your act together, or do I have to kick you guys to the curb?”
Rose immediately straightened, properly chastised. I snapped my gum. “Fine.”
Before we opened the order window, Pai pulled out his phone and took a photo of Rose and me for the truck’s Instagram account. He tried to make us smile, but we refused.
“You two,” he said, shaking his head. “By the way, we document every stop, so I’ll give you guys the passwords to our social media accounts.” The wheels started turning for all the weird stuff I could do with this power.
My dad pointed his phone at me. “Don’t even think about it. I’ll be reviewing every post and have the ability to delete at any given moment.”
“Do you have guidelines?” Rose said, pulling out her little notepad again.
I scoffed. “How complicated could it be to take a photo?”
He jabbed a finger into my temple. Very Korean. “Rose, I’ll e-mail you everything you need to know, no wor
ries.”
She beamed and my dad rubbed his hands together. “All right, this is the real thing, you guys. Girls. Ladies. Whatever. Clara, we’re going to handle the food. Rose, you’ll handle the orders.”
“By myself?” Rose asked, her voice abnormally fearful.
He smiled at her, and her expression changed to adoration. Barf. “Don’t worry, I’ll come over and help,” he said, chucking her playfully under the chin. She floated off to the order window.
Before I could gloat about getting kitchen duty, my dad said, “After thirty minutes, you’ll switch.” Then he popped open the windows. Just like that, without any warning. Rose’s eyes grew wide, and I knew she was equally surprised.
There was already a line. Rose nervously smoothed down the front of her shirt then glanced at my dad—waiting for permission, it seemed. “Go ahead and ask what they’d like,” he said, nodding encouragingly.
She leaned over the counter and spoke loud and clear. “Hello, what would you like to order today?”
I laughed. “You sound like a robot.”
Another poke in my temple from Pai. “Knock it off, Clara. Get ready to prep.” He pushed me toward the food prep counter, which was on the opposite side from the windows.
A nebbishy white guy in round tortoiseshell glasses ordered one lombo and one pastel, which my dad repeated loudly to me. Rose fumbled with the cashbox, dropping wads of cash onto the floor. “Oh God!”
My dad swept it up and handed it to her before she could even reach down. “You’re fine, Rose,” he said with a wink. She smiled but still looked rattled taking the next order. Dang, she really was nervous.
The nervousness seeped into me, too, suddenly. Why was I in this stupid predicament? Sweating over a stove, worrying about people’s dumb lunch orders when I should have been floating on an inflatable unicorn in a swimming pool. I took a breath, then started to prep the ingredients—my dad would put everything together later.
Things were going smoothly until the orders started coming in quickly. Really quickly. And a harried Latina girl with thick black bangs and a nose piercing put in an order for five different plates and ten pasteis.