by Staff | LaJollaLight.com
The blue-collar commissary trucks of decades past that made lunch-hour pit stops at office complexes and factories to fill workers’ bellies with pedestrian Wonder Bread sandwiches, bagged chips, and sugary drinks have been supplanted by the trendy gourmet mobile food trucks that tool around town and turn up at farmers markets and like venues. Here are a few for citywide meals-a-go-go.
1. Marko Pavlinovic, who was born and raised in Milan, operates the fledging Italian eatery on wheels called Mangia, Mangia Mobile. He serves such divine family recipes as hand-crafted gnocchi, lasagna with garlic bread, chicken parm, Italian Lollipops (tempura-dipped meatballs on a stick with marinara dipping sauce), fried calamari and fresh wild-caught salmon or mahi mahi paninis with fries — all priced around $8 a meal.
Pavlinovic opened the food truck since he didn’t have the dough-re-mi to fulfill his dream of launching a full-service restaurant. He’s already caught the eyeballs of discriminating lunch diners and the folks at The Food Network, his food truck makes an upcoming stop on “Street Eats” this fall.
Look for Mangia Mangia weekly at the Ace Hardware parking lot off Prospect in La Jolla, Saturday at the Farmers Market in Golden Hill, and at the La Jolla Fresh Aire Market on Sundays.
2. Dyann Huffman and Kristina Repp have been feeding San Diegans since December with “food so good, it’s bad” off their Devilicious food truck. You be the judge with butter-poached lobster grilled cheese with caramelized onions on sourdough, Drunken Duck on a Truck in a lettuce wrap with rice noodles and habanero kimchee sauce, Bison on a Stick paired with blue cheese smashed potatoes, Fried Yumminess (deep-fried chili), and truffle fries with black pepper.
3. Organic fanatics should look for David Holtze’s Green Truck at assorted locales around San Diego, after debuting in Los Angeles and New York City. Holtze’s mission “Healing our planet one meal at a time,” is accomplished through sustainable practices, such as fueling the truck with the filtered vegetable oil they used for cooking their food, generating energy for their commissary kitchen with solar-power, and replacing plastic and Styrofoam with compostable materials made from potato starch, wheat and corn.
As for the food, the ingredients are sourced from local farms like Suzie’s Organic Farms, Stehly’s Organic Farms and Bread on Market.
Menu items include the Mother Trucker Vegan Burger, (signature made-from-scratch veggie patty topped with organic sprouts, heirloom tomatoes and the secret sauce) the Chipotle Wahoo Fish Taco with pineapple pico de gallo and scratch-made chipotle sauce enveloped in a natural corn tortilla or grilled Jidori chicken pesto wrap served on warm lavash bread. Add some fresh pita chips with organic hummus made daily, and wash it down nicely with an Organic Palmer, seasonal iced teas blended with agave and fresh squeezed Meyer lemons. More at GreenTruckOnTheGo.com
The Kitchen Shrink’s Truckin’ Truffle Sweet Potato Fries
(Where possible, use organics)
2 medium yams or sweet potatoes, peeled
1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of black or white truffle oil
Cayenne pepper, sea salt, paprika, black pepper to taste
Directions: Heat oven to 450º. Cut sweet potatoes in shoestring strips (3 inches long, 1/4 inch thick, your choice). In a mixing bowl, combine oils and seasoning. Toss the sweet potato strips in the mixture until well coated. Place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake until crisp on the outside, soft inside, about 25 minutes. Serve with blue cheese dressing for dipping. Enjoy immediately.
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