Walnut A-Go-Go: Boulder Favorite Now on Wheels

Long a neighborhood favorite on both the north and south sides of town, Walnut Café has gone mobile in the form of Dinah, a checkered, flag-bedecked cargo hulk that represents their entree into Boulder’s increasingly crowded food truck market. On offer: Walnut Café’s signature mix of warm, down-home diner food, cut with just enough freshness and a dash of crunchitude to remind you this is still the People’s Republic of Boulder.

Walnut A-Go-Go does a remarkable job of replicating the experience, starting with the spunky, smiling service at the counter window. The woman at the window brought some much-needed warmth to an ice-slicked Tuesday with the Boulder latte ($3.25), a simple, strong espresso gone decadent with just a hint of vanilla, cinnamon, and sweet honey.

My chilly morning got hotter with a faithfully recreated Yo Yo Wrap ($6.50), which featured a tortilla brimming over with steaming scrambled eggs, crunchy potatoes, gooey cheddar, mushrooms, and green chiles for a little kick. (A word of warning: Without the plate offered at the sedentary version of the Walnut, the green chile will overwhelm its foil wrapper, and it will stream onto your keyboard.)

Breakfast was enough of a treat that I returned for a lunch sampling. I settled on Beckham’s burger ($7.50), a perfectly decent backyard burger, albeit topped with a hair too much gloppy barbecue sauce and the ubiquitous green chiles. For me, the sweet sauce undercut the relatively mild and subtle heat of the chiles; I would’ve preferred less of the former and more of the latter. Still, the juicy patty on a soft Kaiser bun brought some Soccer-Sunday grease, flavor, and excitement to a day that normally would’ve been populated by a homemade salad or a blah sandwich.

More impressive was Walnut A-Go-Go’s smothered burrito ($7). Many restaurants that dabble in Mexican cuisine without devoting themselves to it end up with whitewashed dishes that approximate Mexican food without capturing its essential zest. Not so with Walnut A-Go-Go’s burrito: They guiltlessly use heaps of pork green chili and cheese atop a soft whole-wheat tortilla. Inside, tender chunks of white-meat chicken mixed with steaming black beans. Calorically careless and sumptuously sloppy, this was kitchen-sink Mexican dish as it is meant to be. Though the healthy side of me wanted to get an apple as a side, the multicolored tortilla chips came in handy to scoop up remnant pools of green chile.

While other food trucks seek to create a wholly original experience (Streat Chefs’ celebration of international street foods, for instance, or Comida’s barrio-influenced Mexican), Walnut A-Go-Go embarks on the relatively simpler mission of bringing the familiar and beloved flavors of the mothership to your doorstep (or more likely, workplace parking lot). In pursuing this goal, they mostly succeed: Though pared down and pruned, Dinah and her cheerful pilots do a solid job of translating Walnut’s Boulderized comfort food for the mobile market. If you get a hankering for classic Walnut, check their Twitter feed before driving out to them: They might already be parked right outside your window.