Food Trucks

Food trucks are an interesting and amusing cultural phenomena. A restaurant on wheels. Gourmet food trucks are even better: a cultural movement toward locally-sourced, organic, high-quality food. Delivered by gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles, which probably mitigates much of the benefit of the local sourcing. But whatever; strange as it might seem to buy high quality food from a large truck, I’m a fan of the food truck scene in the Bay Area.

Before this summer, I hadn’t had much opportunity to really partake of gourmet food trucks. There was a weekend at the Treasure Island Flea Market, known for the variety of trucks it attracts. But IBM Research – Almaden is in the middle of nowhere, so grabbing lunch at a food truck wasn’t really an option.

The move to Samsung, however, raised new possibilities. The User Experience Center is along 1st Street north of San Jose, which tends to attract a number of food trucks. Roaming Hunger has become our source for locating nearby food trucks when we’re in the mood, although we’re looking for other sources of info as well (know any good ones?). We’ve really just gotten started looking in the last few weeks, but two early favorites are Porky’s SJ and Banjara Bistro.

Porky’s SJ serves tasty Korean or Vietnamese-style pork in sandwiches, tacos, or lettuce wraps. Both types of pork are extremely tasty, although I’ll confess a slight preference for the Korean-style. And their tater tots are delicious.

Banjara Bistro serves crepes, sandwiches, and omelets. You can also get the craps as a wrap, which they dub a crep-brito (a name I’ll confess I find deeply amusing and have ordered just to say). Their Southern Style crep-brito is extremely tasty.

One truck which I’m curious to try and am just waiting for a good opportunity is Grilled Cheese Bandits; I’ve been a huge fan of grilled cheese ever since I learned to make it as a kid. And the Mashed Tater Balls look awesome.

One other minor note: many of the trucks accept credit card payments via Square, which is incredibly convenient for those of us who don’t usually bother carrying much cash. Yet another way Square is awesome.