Posts Tagged ‘food truck’

The city of Oakland implemented a new food vending program in 2017. But, how accessible is the industry to immigrant communities? And how does one family go about creating community through a food truck business?

Individual food trucks are only permitted to park and sell food in Fruitvale and East Oakland neighborhoods, frustrating food truck owners.

To Michael Davidson, aka The Grilled Cheez Guy, the secret’s in the brick. This local purveyor of gooey, honest-to-goodness grilled cheese sandwiches cooks his comfort food under a brick wrapped in foil—the pressure, he says, ensures the sandwich cooks evenly and has his signature, perfectly crisp exterior.

One of the all-time favorites dishes at the old Jon’s Street Eats was the ahi tuna roll. Chef Jon Kosorek would lightly sear rare tuna encrusted with black sesame seeds, top it with Asian-inspired slaw and wasabi aioli, then layer it all into a grilled soft white roll. When Kosorek shuttered Jon’s Street Eats in February, moving onto an executive chef job in Calistoga, his customers lamented the loss.

Goodbye to the cured pork tacos served with mint, cabbage and diakon radishes. Goodbye to the creamy mac-and-cheese cake topped with panko breadcrumbs and Gremolata cheese. Goodbye to the butterscotch pudding. One of Oakland’s first mobile food trucks, Jon’s Street Eats, is shutting up shop.

Every morning Ronald Robles gets up and hand-grinds different kinds of fresh pepper—white, Sichuan and black. He also hand-makes three types of mayonnaise; there’s garlic-flavored, chili and regular. Robles is the owner and chef of Fiveten Burger, one of the newest food trucks to come out of Oakland, and he’s dishing out what he calls “America’s favorite food”—the burger.

Ebbett’s Good to Go is one of the newest food trucks cruising the East Bay to hawk gourmet fare. Its chefs focus on specialty sandwiches made from organic and local ingredients.

Many of the food trucks we see cruising around Oakland, like Jon’s Street Eats and Seoul on Wheels, post up in Emeryville during the lunch rush. In addition to being full of office parks with lots of hungry customers, Emeryville also has a streamlined permitting process that makes it easier for these mobile restaurants to…

Seoul on Wheels is not your typical taco truck—the tacos being served up are more Far East than south of the border. In addition to kimchee burritos, aka “korritos,” Julia Yoon, the owner of Seoul on Wheels, sells barbeque tacos, barbeque sandwiches, traditional barbeque rice plates and more—all of which have Korean ingredients, spices and flourish.

One or two days a week, a little before noon, a crowd of people begins to line up in downtown Oakland, right off Broadway near City Hall. It’s unclear what they’re waiting for though, because there’s nothing there. Shortly, a big white truck painted with colorful polka dots rounds the corner. Stenciled on the side of the truck, it says “Cupkates—a mobile cupcakery.”

Jon’s Street Eats is one of a new series of food trucks popping up all over the East Bay serving innovative street food — in this case, gourmet grub like grilled asparagus, butterscotch pudding and panko-coated mac and cheese. As Oakland-based chef Jon Kosorek puts it: “There’s not a lot of places where you can get hand-pulled mozzarella. I would never be able to do a hot dog cart with just boiled hot dogs. I’d go crazy.”