By Contributor | Philly.com
What is it?: This imaginative food truck offers up unique dishes comprising fresh produce, meats, and cheeses from sustainable Philadelphia area farms.
On the menu are soups, salads and sandwiches for $4 – $8, and desserts for less than $5.
Menu: Being more of a grilled cheese and french fries person, I have to be convinced, cajoled, sometimes even tricked into sampling more healthy fare than is typically found on the kids menu at a local diner.
But as soon as I rolled up on Yumtown I was sold. The catchy dish monikers had me at “hello” with names such as Edgar Allan Potato, Jive Turkey, and Rising Sun. I could hazard a guess at their many global gastronomic influences, but I would categorize the menu as healthy comfort food.
Healthy, but not necessarily low-calorie. The Rising Sun, for instance, has meat loaf, caramelized onions, spinach, Havarti cheese and fried egg on a challah bun.
Best dish: The Joy. I am normally not a fan of pulled pork – it’s usually oversalted and chewy.
The Joy, however, is sublime. It’s a massive sandwich composed of pulled pork, tangy red cabbage, coleslaw, house pickled peppers, aioli, hidden jalapeños, and barbecue sauce, all spilling off of a challah bun. No, you can’t eat this gracefully.
The sandwich is perfectly sauced and artfully balanced between the sweet, the spicy, the tangy and the hot. It is sometime during the first bite that an angelic boys choir starts singing “Gloria in excelsis Deo” inside your mind, that’s how good it is.
Dessert: White-Chocolate Cranberry Bread Pudding with Maple Whipped Cream.
The deal: Yumtown’s sandwiches are a bargain at $7-$8 each, given the cornucopia of fresh and fancy ingredients.
The wait: At lunch the line can be 10 or more deep.
Find it: Temple University campus. Look for the artfully hand-painted food truck graced with stylized vegetables on Norris Street between 12th and 13th, right outside the Tyler School of Art.
There since: October 2011.
Hours: Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. at Temple. Saturdays 10 a.m.-3 p.m., at Clark Park in University City.
Look for Yumtown’s new breakfast menu and morning hours beginning in January 2013.
Contact:yumtownusa.com and on Facebook and Twitter.
