Lou Bustamante

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks.

The Truck: Cholita Linda
The Cuisine: Mexican mixed with Peruvian with a dash of Cuban
Specialty Items: Tacos and aguas frescas
Worth the Wait in Line? At peak time, a total 20 minutes from the end of the line to food in hand.

A long line at a mobile food vendor, as dreaded as it may be, has an irresistible appeal. There is a sense (sometimes misguided) that the lengthy line is an endorsement for the deliciousness of food being served, a populist seal of approval. I often make a concerted and contrarian effort to hit the shortest line, but sometimes curiosity gets the better of me and I file in like a baby duckling.

While things don't always work out--I often kill more time than hunger--sometimes the crowds know what they're there for. On a recent sunny day, the snaking line at Cholita Linda and the large number of taco plates leaving the pick-up window proved too much to resist.

See also: Food Truck Bite of the Week: Floating on a Peanut Butter Cream Puff at Pacific Puffs
Food Truck Bite of the Week: Finding Home with Laksa at Azalina's Malaysian
Off the Grid's Picnic at the Presidio: Like a Day in Dolores, But Better Food, Drinks, and Grass

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Lou Bustamante

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks.

The Truck: Pacific Puffs
The Cuisine: Cream puffs in seasonal and classic flavors
Specialty Items: Mini and regular sized cream puffs
Worth the Wait in Line? At peak lunch time, a total 4 minutes from the end of the line to food in hand.

Before I started logging a serious number of hours and calories exploring food trucks, a friend of mine asked what my favorite food truck was. "Oh, the cupcake truck," I replied, smiling and closing my eyes with the memory of it. Annoyed, he asked me again, implying I provided an invalid answer, and that the cupcake truck somehow didn't qualify as a food truck.

It made me think of the discussion you often hear in the music scene about DJs and their validity as musicians. Just like DJs sequence their rhythms ahead of time, dessert trucks make their wares in a kitchen before loading them on the truck. Perhaps if we referred to both as conductors (one with sweets, the other with beats) we could stop arguing, start dancing and enjoying truck dispensed sweet treats again, preferably at the same time.

See also: Pacific Puffs Expands From Union Street Storefront to Puff Truck
Food Truck Bite of the Week: Finding Home with Laksa at Azalina's Malaysian
Off the Grid's Picnic at the Presidio: Like a Day in Dolores, But Better Food, Drinks, and Grass

More »

J. Schell

Grab a blanket, grub, and sun at Off the Grid: Presidio Picnic

Civility isn't something you associate with food truck events, but are you really looking for "wholesome" among the carts? Part of the fun is the mass of humanity, the snaking lines, the comparing of food tips with strangers, and the discovery we have more room in our stomachs than we previously thought. Food trucking is the culinary equivalent of music festivals: you do it for the communal social experience as much as for the performances.

Showcasing a more refined side to the trucks are two events: Off the Grid Presidio Picnic (with full drink menu!) and Fiveten Burgers making a pop-up appearance (get a taste of what the future brick and mortar location may bring) at Trace.

See also: Food Truck Bite of the Week: Hoofing Burgers at Fins on the Hoof
Food Truck Bite of the Week: Porchetta Nachos at The Whole Beast
Food Truck Bite of the Week: Fiveten Deep in Burgers

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Lou Bustamante

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks.

The Truck: The Whole Beast
The Cuisine: Whole animal cuisine
Specialty Items: Sandwiches, smoked meats and veggies
Worth the Wait in Line? At peak dinner time, a total 13 minutes from the end of the line to food in hand.

The way we eat is largely defined by our culture and upbringing, but globally there is one thing we can all agree on: The smell of food cooked over a wood fire or smoke will trigger a reaction from the primitive and logical parts of our brain that politely says, "Fuck yes!"

Watching John Fink and his team at The Whole Beast pull a large, dark, bronzed stump of porchetta out of the large Southern Pride smoker oven at last week's Fort Mason edition of Off the Grid, the smell had my brain in overdrive like broker on the stock exchange shouting, "Buy! Buy! Buy!" at the pork belly market.

See also: Food Truck Bite of the Week: Porchetta Sandwich at Roli Roti
The Best Things We're Eating and Drinking at Outside Lands: Day 2
Dish Duel: The Great Porchetta Smackdown

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Tamara Palmer

Duck larb sandwich by Side Pony.

If you haven't yet been to the new season of Off The Grid's Fort Mason Fridays, there are plenty of intriguing new food and drink options that await you there. One of our new favorites is Side Pony, which specializes in remixing non-bunned dishes into sandwich form.

See Also:
-Sign of Spring: Off The Grid Returns to Fort Mason

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Lou Bustamante

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks.

The Truck: Casey's Pizza
The Cuisine: Old New York-style pizza
Specialty Items: Pizza
Worth the Wait in Line? At peak lunch time, a total 10 minutes from the end of the line to food in hand.

There are certain dishes, like pizza and barbecue, that inspire opinions, heated discussions, and classifications to such detail that they almost require their own taxonomic rank.

Having worked at a pizza parlor during the length of my high school years, I certainly have my own ideas of what makes pizza good. There is a natural instinct to want to fill up all the space with excess -- the more is better school of pizza and life -- but it's not just about filling up space that make it taste good. It's about the interplay of the toppings and the negative space between them that makes it taste good. The things that aren't there are as important as the ones that are. It's about proper curation. That's part of what makes Casey's Pizza so good.

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Lou Bustamante

A sampler platter

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks.

The Truck: 4505 Meats' First Tuesday BBQ
The Cuisine: Meat, most likely topped with more meat
Specialty Items: Anything out of the smoker
Worth the Wait in Line? At peak lunch time, a total 10 minutes from the end of the line to food in hand.

At the weekly markets at the Ferry Building and Mission Community Market (and now its retail store in the Mission), 4505 Meats has been rocking as a mobile food hit-maker, belting out now classic ballads like their Chicharrones, Zilla Dog, and Chicken Yum Yum for a few years now. If you eat meat, you've most likely eaten here.

But once a month, on the first Tuesday of the month (that's tomorrow), they bring a smoker, three different meats, and all the fixins' to the Ferry Building Farmers Market.

See Also:- 4505 Meats' Chicken Yum Yum Sandwich
- 4505 Meats Butcher Shop: Where Dreams Come True
- Hi-Lo BBQ: San Francisco Gets Its Own Barbecue

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Tamara Palmer

Foie de Vivre's foie gras torchon, served on asphault.

The statewide ban on the sale and production of foie gras was enacted nine months ago to the day, but that wasn't the end to the delicacy being served in San Francisco. Savvy patrons have gotten used to seeing inflated salad and "supplement" prices on fine menus, and connected diners have continued to receive foie freebies on their dinner plates.

But it took this long for a smart person to really explore the loopholes in the ban and see if there might be any way around it. Enter Roger Vivre, proprietor of the new food cart Foie de Vivre.

See Also:
- 14 Days Left: Where To Find The Last, Craziest Bites of Foie Gras Before The Ban

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Lou Bustamante

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks.

The Truck: Hapa Ramen and Wise Sons Deli
The Cuisine: Food Truck Mash-up
Specialty Items: Seasonally influenced ramen (Hapa Ramen) and Jewish deli classics (Wise Sons Deli)
Worth the Wait in Line? At peak lunch time, a total 27 minutes from the end of the line to food in hand.

There is something oddly alluring about combining two different dishes into one. Before you roll your eyes too far back, hear me out. What about the turducken? The churpumple? Whether it's simply a mad dream to find a combination that multiplies the flavors into an outrageously delicious combo (without going too far into Flavortown), or because I simply spend too much time thinking about food, I had a plan.

One day while waiting my food at the Hapa Ramen stand, I looked over at their neighbor, Wise Sons and wondered, "Why aren't they doing a crossover dish that combines ramen noodles with fresh pastrami?" Intrigued by the idea, I set off to create my own dish that combined the power of both and I would call it the Wise Bowl.

See also: Making a Cherpumple at Home Proves One Long, Hot Mess
Food Truck Bite of the Week: WhipOut Whips Up Some Tasty Sides
Food Truck Bite of the Week: Hoofing Burgers at Fins on the Hoof

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Lou Bustamante

Our weekly bite explores the city's food trucks, one at a time, highlighting our favorite mobile dishes and snacks.

The Truck: WhipOut
The Cuisine: American cuisine with flair
Specialty Items: Sliders and the sides
Worth the Wait in Line? At peak lunch time, a total 20 minutes from the end of the line to food in hand.

I'm a sucker for sliders. Maybe it's because they look like cute baby hamburgers or perhaps because they cast an illusion of eating less (except you end up eating more of them, like those diabolical miniature Reese's peanut butter cups). The combination of these bite sized burgers and it's first appearance in San Francisco this past Friday, got me in line at the WhipOut truck.

See also: Triple Take: 3 Must-Try Sliders Around Town
Brunch at Sycamore: Stick with Bar Bites & Sliders
Food Truck Bite of the Week: Hoofing Burgers at Fins on the Hoof

More »