Tag: street food

Making tamales is a long, multi-step process that Latino families traditionally tackle together for special occasions. For Los Tamaleros truck, tamale-making is a family undertaking that’s out to make every stop feel like a special event.

Though street tamales have been sold from carts across Los Angeles since the 1800s, Joe Vargas noticed that they hadn’t been a main feature on the latest trendy food trucks. So, in 2015, he started Los Tamaleros as a modern masa-bundling business, driven by generational family recipes learned from his mother, Lidia. Joe helms Los Tamaleros with his son Alejandro and daughter Vanessa managing the business, while his wife Julie oversees food preparation. Altogether, the Vargas family fuels Los Tamaleros with their affection for making fresh Mexican specialties by hand.

“My dad’s always had a big interest in creating something to give back, and making tamales was something that was passed down in my family,” said Alejandro. “So, that’s what we try to put out there is food that we enjoy ourselves and that we hope other people will enjoy.”

Of course, tamales headline the truck’s menu, filled with familiar favorites including chicken, pork, cheese, and sweet corn. Given the hours it takes to prepare them, the crew takes on the arduous task of making each component and assembling the tamales in a kitchen beforehand. The meats must be cooked, the salsas blended, the masa formed and stuffed, the corn husks soaked, and the tamales wrapped—all in preparation to be loaded onto the truck where the end product gets freshly cooked in a hot steam bath as the final step.

Once you unwrap the pouch, bubbles quickly evaporate as mingling aromas of freshly cut corn and spices are exhaled in steam. Los Tamaleros makes sure the fillings maximize the entire length of the masa tunnel, peeking out from each end and giving you a mouthful of flavor from the first to the last bite. “That’s the fun part,” Alejandro said, “opening the tamales, and being surprised by the taste and the presentation and what’s inside.”

Filling the tamales can be a tricky task in itself, which can elude even the most patient of home cooks. “If it’s too masa heavy, it’s not going to be a good tamale,” Alejandro advised. “If it’s too little or too thin, it’s going to break it apart. So, it’s definitely all about consistency.”

The meat tamales exude the distinctive tastes of housemade salsas from recipes that go back several generations in the Vargas family. Chicken is mixed with salsa verde, and pork is usually spiced with red salsa, creating signature flavors for the food truck. “That’s probably the most important. That’s what makes our tamales different. They have a kick to it,” Alejandro explained. “If you open it up and eat it, you definitely feel the spice. To me, that’s authentic.”

Los Tamaleros sources many of their ingredients from independently owned carnicerias and local shops. According to Alejandro, some of them don’t even have names, but what they lack in signage and branding, they make up for in authentic Mexican produce. Many work directly with farmers and ranchers in California and Mexico.

“Walking into these little mom-and-pop shops when we need to get basic ingredients is something we’ve known to be essential to what we do and the idea of tradition that we try to carry,” Alejandro said.

Though the tamales tend to seize the spotlight, Los Tamaleros also makes other authentic Mexican dishes on the truck, including tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and tortas. “It tastes different for you to try them when they’re made fresh in front of you,” said Alejandro. “It gives you an idea of the work that goes into creating food.”

For the tacos, balls of masa dough are flattened into tortillas, then immediately thrown onto the grill, forming a warm platter to fold around a selection of contents such as fish, chicken, or boldly seasoned traditional meats, including carnitas, al pastor, asada, birria, and chorizo. And for the adventurous, there’s lengua (tongue), cabeza (head), and buche (pork stomach). “Those are delicacies. If you know it, then you’re going to try it,” Alejandro said. “It’s also fun seeing people try something they haven’t tried before.”

To satisfy your crunchier cravings, taquitos are the latest addition to the menu. Los Tamaleros also makes these by hand, rolling freshly pressed tortillas around seasoned chicken and frying them until crispy. These bronzed tubes of masa and meat are then topped with crumbled cheese, salsa verde, sour cream, and shredded lettuce.

The sopes are also subject to the masa-manipulating skills of the Los Tamaleros crew, shaping out thicker, compact tortillas on which to balance the meats and toppings. “With Mexican food, you can definitely create one thing from another. And they’re all so interlinked with masa,” Alejandro said.

Masa is even incorporated among the beverage options, in Los Tamaleros’ seasonal champurrado. This traditional Mexican hot chocolate drink is thickened with corn flour and flavored with cinnamon and other ingredients from a family recipe. It’s only available from late October through the fall and winter when it can be kept warm and fresh on the truck. But for hot days or anytime you need to quench your thirst, the truck regularly offers cold jamaica and horchata.

In the spirit of forming gatherings around traditional foods, you may often find Los Tamaleros surrounded by lingering groups of bobbing heads energized by beats from the S.W.A.T. Jamz truck, which is deejayed by former police officer Manny Ortiz. This mobile DJ booth was also a former police truck that Joe converted to start another Vargas family enterprise.

“Our peak times happen around 7-8pm, and then we get people dancing and doing dance moves here,” Joe said with a smile.

You can find Los Tamaleros each week at Truckies Tuesdays in Sylmar and the Granada Hills Grubfest on Fridays. For other engagements, click their profile below to find their website and follow them on social media. There, you can also keep up with announcements for placing tamale orders by the dozen for the holidays.

If a glimpse of a kids menu makes you hanker for some good ol’ mac-n-cheese, welcome to adulthood. Luckily, Los Angeles has a welcome wagon for grown-ups like you (and kids, too): the Roni Macaroni truck.

“Who doesn’t like mac and cheese?” said Roni Macaroni owner Mark Hurlston, quoting a phrase commonly heard around the food truck. “It’s been told to me many times.” With 39 years of experience in catering, Mark set out on a mobile mac and cheese mission with his wife Abril nearly two years ago.

Unsurprisingly, Mark’s childhood reference for the truck’s main dish was Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. While Roni Macaroni’s core product is reminiscent of Kraft in its creaminess and comforting sense of nostalgia, the similarities end there. A far cry from packaged cheese powder, Roni Macaroni makes its base cheese sauce with heavy cream and mild cheddar. And instead of compact, narrow noodles, Mark opted for large elbow pasta, which offers a soft, springy structure that delivers smooth cheesiness in every bite.

“It just seemed to hold the sauce a little bit better,” he said. “We cook it all ourselves on the truck, and the sauces.”  On busy days, Roni Macaroni can go through 15 large tubs of pasta. So Mark orders dry pasta in 20-pound bags and cooks up batches in 11 to 12 minutes, careful to avoid overcooking. Well-practiced preparation allows orders to come out fairly quickly, within five minutes or less.

While Roni Macaroni’s straight mac and cheese is well received on its own, mashups with other everyday comfort food flavors add a tantalizing sense of unexpected familiarity.

“A lot of times people think of mac and cheese as plain and simple,” said Abril. “However, we surprise you by going beyond that and adding more complex flavors to make a really different flavor combination.”

The number one seller is the Steak Mac & Cheese, which mixes in shaved ribeye, grilled onions, and pimento peppers, with a topping of toasted breadcrumbs. Each mouthful is infused with beef flavor, and the pimentos add a zesty kick.

The LA Street Mac & Cheese is a nod to the bacon-wrapped hot dogs often sold on the streets of Los Angeles. It’s a marriage of creamy and hearty textures with bold salty flavors, folding in chunks of 100% beef kosher hot dogs and bacon, plus grilled onions and bell peppers.

The Buffalo Ranch Chicken Mac & Cheese is a tailgate party in a cup. “That’s actually one of my favorites,” Mark said. Hot wing sauce gives the cheese a more orangey hue, hinting at the spicy heat embedded within. Pieces of chicken, celery, and protruding sticks of julienned carrots ensure you get the full buffalo wing platter experience, complete with a drizzle of ranch dressing.

If you scoff at using utensils for your street eats, look for the handheld mashup options on Roni Macaroni’s menu. Mac and cheese is handily layered in burgers, hot dogs, and pulled pork or grilled cheese sandwiches. The cheesy pasta tempers the spiciness of the chili dog or the chili cheeseburger and enhances the barbecue in the pulled pork. Meanwhile, the bread becomes a sponge of flavor, soaking up the meaty cheese sauce.

Even without the mac and cheese, these sandwiches are made to satisfy cravings for ballpark classics. The hot dog is crisp on the surface, bursting with juiciness as your teeth sink in. The pulled pork exudes a certain sweetness amidst a light smothering of barbecue sauce. And before you even attempt to pick up the burger, drippings from the Angus patties will remind you to grab a stack of napkins.

But wait… there’s more! Don’t forget your side of fries: sweet potato, truffle parmesan, garlic, or topped with chili and/or cheese sauces. No matter what you order, the options to add on other meats, veggies and toppings ensure that you can always try something new.

Mark and Abril have yet to discover the limit of what they can create. As a result, their menu is constantly changing as they try new ideas. Crab Truffle Mac & Cheese and Hot Cheetos Mac & Cheese are some of the newest items on the truck. Not long ago, Taco Mac & Cheese made a special appearance and may see a return. In the near future, Mark also hopes to debut pizza or chili cheeseburger varieties of mac and cheese.

For particular events, Mark and Abril try to dream up something special, like they did for a recent Street Food Cinema screening of the movie Selena, based on the singer’s life. “Selena’s favorite color was purple. So we got edible purple glitter and put that on our regular mac and cheese,” Mark said.

Roni Macaroni also has a fierce vegan following, serving long lines of customers at vegan events, such as this year’s Vegan Street Fair in North Hollywood and the Vegan Playground in Downtown LA. “When we do the vegan festivals, we completely clean the truck—change our grease and everything—so there’s no meat products, no residue from meat products,” said Mark.

Vegans are treated to plant-based versions of Roni Macaroni menu items, including their plain, Buffalo, and LA Street (with vegan hot dogs and bacon) mac and cheese, plus tofu sliders, and garlic and truffle fries. Since existing vegan cheeses couldn’t adequately capture the signature creaminess of mac and cheese, Mark worked with a friend whom he dubs as their “cheese master” to create a proprietary non-dairy recipe. The result is a convincingly cheesy taste and texture that even non-vegans enjoy.

In addition to the menu variety, Roni Macaroni’s affordable prices and substantial serving sizes add to the truck’s wide appeal. A “small” 12 oz cup of mac and cheese is $5 and a “large” 24 oz cup is $8. The large cup is often shared between couples, and parents appreciate that they can feed the whole family with two large cups.

“It makes us really happy when someone comes back and thanks us for their food after having eaten it,” Abril said. “We like feeding people and making them happy.”

To catch Roni Macaroni, click their Foodzooka profile below to find the truck schedule on their website and follow them on social media.

It was late last February when the Chi-Pie food trailer first opened near the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Inside, two Windy City transplants baked up weighty slices of Chicago-style deep dish pizza built to blow away Los Angeles taste buds. Soon, a growing line of customers had formed to grab a slice before they sold out.

Why all the commotion over pizza? Because each slice is nearly two inches tall, containing copious amounts of cheese and/or meat covered with a thick, chunky tomato sauce, all held in by a hardy wall of crust. Looking at a whole pie, you’d never know it had so much cheese because—that’s right—it’s layered on the bottom, not on top.

Co-owners Malysha Flanders and Lindsay Sammons enjoy the reactions from those who have never seen or tried Chicago deep dish before. “A lot of people are skeptical at first,” said Malysha. When confused customers wonder why they don’t see the cheese or meat, he often has to reassure them, “It’s in there. Trust me.”

The Chi-Pie duo also delights in the pleasantly surprised reactions they get when people first taste their deep dish. First-timers realize what they’ve been missing, while former Chicagoans reminisce over the familiar flavors they’ve missed. In fact that nostalgic craving, combined with the scarcity of authentic Chicago deep dish pizza in Los Angeles, was what drove Malysha and Lindsay to start the business.

“We are huge pizza fanatics, so we decided to start up our own company that has really good pizza,” said Lindsay. “What we really like is that this tastes just like Chicago pizza.”

Though neither Malysha nor Lindsay claim a culinary background, they both grew up with a love for cooking and experimenting. To formulate the right recipes for Chi-Pie, they picked up some helpful tips from a friend in the pizza business in the Chicago area.

“The hardest thing was definitely the crust,” said Malysha. He and Lindsay wrestled with the dough until they found that signature balance of thickness and cooking time that results in a satisfying crunch. It took many rounds of trial and error to avoid outcomes that ranged from rock hard to a soggy mess. The crust also has to achieve the renowned golden color of deep dish pizza, which visually reinforces its robustly buttery scent.

“When you eat it, you’re not only tasting it, but you’re smelling it,” Lindsay said. “It’s activating all of your senses.”

While the crust is a substantial component on its own, the inch of cheese that lines the bottom adds to the pizza’s heft. Hidden beneath a blanket of sauce, the cheese stays warm and molten enough to stretch into long strings when slices are pulled away. The next layer of meat and sauce gives the pie its iconic red-top look. Chi-Pie created their own sauce recipe, preferring one that’s slightly sweet with big chunks of peeled tomato and a kick of red pepper.

“The thing about deep dish is, to make it fresh and authentic, you have to take time with it,” Malysha explained. With such a thick pizza, an 8-inch pie takes 25 minutes to bake, which can result in longer waits for Chi-Pie lunch crowds on busy days.

“If you don’t let it cook long enough, then the cheese won’t get that ooey-gooey kind of melty feeling that you want when you bite into it,” said Lindsay.

But proceed with caution, because these slices are gut-busting. Customers with ambitious appetites have ordered two or three slices at a time, only to discover that they could only finish one in a single sitting. Slices are $5 and currently come in four varieties: cheese, pepperoni, sausage, and a combo of pepperoni and sausage.

“We want to start expanding and doing more toppings,” Lindsay said. “Some people have been requesting a vegetable pizza.” Chi-Pie also wants to start tackling a gluten-free recipe based on customer feedback.

If you head out to find Chi-Pie, keep in mind that it’s not a traditional food truck. Look for a renovated vintage 1967 Cardinal camping trailer, painted white with sky blue trim and red stars along the top. At first glance, it’s about half the size of a normal food truck.

“A lot of people love the vibe and the style,” said Malysha. “We want to keep the old school, new school look just to make it a little different from other trucks.”

Inside the trailer is just enough room for Chi-Pie’s team of two. (Malysha, who stands at 6’3”, negotiates the low ceiling with a slight bend of his knees.) To store and prep enough food, it was retrofitted with a refrigerator, sink, two ovens and an ordering counter. The trailer’s frugal and whimsical charm is punctuated by the pair’s enthusiasm for making pizzas. “It kind of reflects on Chicago itself, how it’s kind of like an oddball city,” Lindsay said.

You can find Chi-Pie regularly parked on Sepulveda Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, and they’re also available for catering. In the coming months, they plan to navigate to more areas across Los Angeles County and open another truck.

“We want to bring that Chicago vibe to more people in LA so they can know what deep dish is like,” Malysha said.

For more information and updates on Chi-Pie, click their Foodzooka profile below to follow them on social media.

For all the cultural diversity in Los Angeles, Puerto Rican food isn’t easy to come by. With barely a handful of restaurants to be had, the recent arrival of Triple Threat Truck was a boon for locals anxious to indulge in authentic tripleta sandwiches, mofongo, tostones, and the mystical flavor known as “sazon.”

As the only one of its kind in LA, Triple Threat Truck has received sentimental welcomes from homesick Puerto Rican transplants since Omayra and George Dakis set it in gear last summer. “We’ve made so many people cry,” said Omayra.

Before moving to the West Coast four years ago, the Dakises resided in Miami, where Puerto Rican food is plentiful. Frustrated with LA’s lack of options, the couple partnered with family friend Sonia Bermudez to create their own.

“Our plan was to not only have a place to be able to taste a little of Puerto Rico, but we also want to take people back,” she said.

Recreating Puerto Rican cuisine in a truck is no simple task, but one iconic dish is a natural fit for the food truck scene. The tripleta is a feast of a sandwich stuffed with three meats—beef, chicken, and pork—and served on a fresh baked semi-sweet pan sobao roll, a sought-after traditional bread from Puerto Rico.

“When you play with the savory and sweet, it gives you an explosion of flavor,” said Omayra. She explained that this is the essence of the cuisine she grew up with and learned to cook from her family.

The Triple Threat Truck’s name was inspired by the signature tripleta sandwich. You can also get tripleta fries with the same meat trifecta piled on a bed of shoestring fries—a nod to a Puerto Rican version of loaded fries known as “papas locas.”

Perhaps the most famous dish in Puerto Rico is mofongo. It’s a mound of mashed plantains that can be served in countless ways, but Triple Threat Truck tops it with a heap of shredded pork or beef served in a bowl of broth.

“Mofongo wasn’t originally on the menu because it takes a long time to make,” Omayra said.

With no small amount of elbow grease, George smashes freshly fried green plantains with garlic, mojo sauce, and pork rinds, using a wooden mortar and pestle called a “pilón” in a time-honored method of making mofongo.

Pulverized plantains are also shaped and fried to make tostones, which can serve as hefty crackers or chunky buns for a variety of fillings. And for special events, Triple Threat Truck turns this versatile banana mash into a taco shell, like they did at last year’s LA Taco Festival.

Besides plantains, the concept of “sazon” connects everything on the menu. Technically, sazon is Spanish for seasoning, but in Puerto Rico it transcends that definition.

“It’s that feeling you get when something takes you back to that childhood memory,” Omayra said. “It’s almost like the soul of Puerto Rico.”

Prior to starting the truck, Omayra was a well-practiced home cook, and George had ties to restaurants operated by his family in the Miami area. The two have passed down their cooking skills to their daughter, Maria, who will be a contestant on season 6 of the Fox series MasterChef Junior, premiering March 2.

Puerto Rico has been on the minds of many since the devastation of last year’s hurricane season. Customers regularly ask Omayra about the current situation and if it’s getting any better.

“My whole father’s side has been entirely affected by the storms,” she said, adding that many are still without electricity, food, and other basic necessities.

“They’ve had an existing crisis for a very long time,” she said. “And this is a way for people to take notice of how unfair it’s been for them.”

Triple Threat Truck has been helping several organizations fundraise and send supplies to Puerto Rico. To anyone who can contribute to the relief efforts, Omayra recommends donating money to Voices for Puerto Rico, the Ricky Martin Foundation, and the Global Empowerment Mission.

Last fall, Triple Threat Truck helped Puerto Ricans In Action raise money to improve conditions for those on the island. They’re now working toward assisting Fundacion Plato Caliente, a volunteer group that delivers meals to hurricane victims.

“Puerto Ricans are resourceful. They’ve come up with solutions that I never in my life would have thought of,” Omayra said.

To keep up with Triple Threat Truck, click the Foodzooka profile below to find their website and truck schedule and to follow them on social media.