It’s Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel. (Except without the fish. Or a barrel. Or a gun, for that matter.)

Overview: So today was Tacoma’s inaugural food truck festival, The Moveable Feast, at Cheney Stadium. Sophie and I managed to find 12 of the food trucks in our Seattle Met article at the festival that we hadn’t eaten at yet. This was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so we headed down to Cheney Stadium to see how far our stomachs would take us. Not as far as we thought, it turns out. In order to maximize our food truck sampling opportunities, we split up, hitting separate trucks for our main course, which are outlined below. The one thing I have to say about the festival experience is that its sort of like taking wildlife photos at the zoo. You get good pictures, but you miss out on the adventure. So while the food was good, the experience of tracking down our food trucks in their native habitat, and finding new areas of Seattle that we haven’t been is definitely more fun than having them all in one place. But the food was still delicious.

Athena’s, Sophie’s take: Athena’s, your Greek food is something absolutely true to its roots. Fresh ingredients, TWO vegetarian options (felafel OR Field Roast), and you still manage to trick my taste buds into thinking that I’m sitting in a rustic restaurant in Greece, all coming from a food truck! How do you do that!? Yes, your line was long, and yes, the wait was so very long. But it was all worth it! Gigantic props to you for using your local resources with Field Roast. Hopefully we’ll meet again Athena’s!

The Box, Chris’ take: The long line and the pork belly hom bao are what caught my attention and made the The Box my first choice, but it was the unlikely sounding mini bagel burger that stole my heart. Well, the super cute baby in the front seat of the food truck who smiled at me stole my heart too. (Extra points for the cute baby.) The pork belly hom bao was a little different than I expected. Rather than a whole steamed bun filled with goodness, it was a steamed piece of  hom bao dough, served open faced with a braised pork belly filling and napa cabbage slaw, more like a soft taco. My only problem with the hom bao is that the delightfully textured and slightly sweet bun stuck to the wrapper, making the whole thing fall apart almost immediately upon trying to eat it. The end result was that I kind of had to shove the whole thing in my mouth at once. It was good, but I feel like it would have been better if I had been able to enjoy it at a more leisurely pace.

The mini bagel burger, on the other hand, was absolutely delicious. The beef and pork patty was perfectly cooked, tender and juicy. The kind of juiciness that has you licking your fingers to get every bit of flavor. The Asian slaw combined with a hoisin and sriracha ketchup complimented it perfectly, and unlike the hom bao, the firmness of the mini bagel held everything together nicely. The mini bagel burger is worth a return trip, for sure.

Now I know why they say to eat desert first: The food truck we were most excited for, Sweet Treats was there with their homemade ice cream sandwiches: A homemade ice cream flavor of your choice, sandwiched between homemade cookies, again, your choice.  Sadly, with only 5 people in front of us, they ran out of ice cream sandwiches, much to our dismay. We’ll have to track them down another day.

Off the Rez, Chris’s take: Since we missed out on homemade ice cream sandwiches, we headed over to Off the Rez, to try out their fry bread. We were too full to sample their full menu, but we did have one each of their naked fry bread, and their sweet fry bread, (we chose Nutella for our topping). Both were perfect. I was glad we tried both, because the Nutella overwhelms the simple deliciousness of the fry bread underneath. If I had to pick only one, believe it or not, I’d probably go with the naked fry bread.

While waiting for our order, we had the chance to look over everyone else’s fry bread soft tacos, which looked incredible. So we’ll definitely head up to Seattle and hit them up for a full sampling of their menu, and a more comprehensive review.

Sophie’s take: Off the Rez, you are our next mission. Your fry bread, both naked and Nutella-d, was more than enough to have me begging for more. Standing in line and watching your Indian tacos passing us by, made me wish I was hungry. Scratch that, starving. Those tacos are HUGE! Nothing I can’t take though. Overall, your naked fry bread was my favorite. The Nutella seemed to cover up the simplicity of the naked version, although the Nutella was for sure a sweet touch. So, we’ll see you again. Not only for some fry bread, but for those awesome looking tacos… Maybe even more, (I’ll make sure to be hungry when I come)!

The 411:

Tacoma Food Truck Festival:

tacomafoodtruck.com

Twitter: @tacomafoodtruck

Facebook: The Moveable Feast

Athenas:

feastwiththegods.com

Twitter: @eatwiththegods

Facebook: Athena’s
The Box:
theboxonwheels.com

Twitter: @theboxonwheels

Facebook: The Box

Off the Rez:

offthereztruck.com

Twitter: @offthereztruck

SPAM is magical. Like unicorns…

Chris’ take: Sophie and I took today off to head up to Seattle and hit up Marination Mobile, another one of Seattle Met’s top 13 food trucks in the Seattle area. On Fridays, they are located right outside Uwajimaya, our favorite Asian grocery store in the Puget Sound, a definite bonus. Sophie is the vegetarian Korea-phile, so I’m sure she’ll have plenty to say about her experience today. Hopefully, it won’t include mentioning that we had to endure the amazing smells coming from this food truck as we drove past it several times, since I had some technical difficulties figuring out how to get into Uwajimaya’s parking lot. At one point, Sophie almost got out of the car to order before the line got too long.

And the line was long, but it moved along remarkably quickly, giving us just the right amount of time to peruse the menu and decide what to have. I couldn’t decide, so I decided to sample a variety of items: a kalbi beef soft taco, a spicy pork soft taco, an aloha (kalua pork) slider, and a spam slider. All of them were done perfectly, the meat juicy and tender, but not soggy or over-seasoned. It’s the toppings that really shine here, adding the perfect crunch of homemade slaw, with spicy, flavorful sauces. Out of the four, the spam slider was definitely my favorite. Spam is one of my favorite meats (I think it’s a meat), and the spam slider is put together masterfully, with the abundance of flavorful toppings and sauces, perfectly balanced, so the salty deliciousness of the spam could still shine through. All nestled comfortably inside a soft, fluffy bun, lightly toasted. I knew from the line and the aroma as we pulled up that we were in for a treat, and I wasn’t disappointed!

Sophie’s take: Lucky for me, I had plenty of time to get excited for this food truck-ing experience… Not only days before we went, but the time we spent continuously driving PAST the food truck itself. Countless times, I “mentioned” that we take “this road over here” or “that road over there”, but to no avail! There we were, spending our wonderful father-daughter time driving past our final destination.

But, this food was for sure worth the wait! Not only did it smell almost too-good-to-be-true, but it tasted like it too! I ordered the kimchi fried rice bowl, with a fried egg and tofu. Now, give me a second. I must love them for being vegetarian-friendly AND Korean. I have made kimchi fried rice quite a few times, and not once was it even close to as amazing as this. Their kimchi was at the perfect amount of fermentation, adding the perfect amount of sour and sweetness. Just imagine, a perfect mixture of sour, sweet, and spicy… All mixed together with warm, steamy tofu and a perfectly fried egg. Yes, it was that amazing.

The 411:

Marination Mobile moves around, plus they have a brick and mortar joint as well. Check them out here:

marinationmobile.com

Twitter: @curb_cuisine

Facebook: Marination