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Tower Grove Park and the line of food trucks
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This Friday, we went to Sauce Magazine's
Food Truck Friday held in Tower Grove Park in St. Louis, Missouri. More than twenty food trucks showed up to sell food ranging from sushi to tacos. Tower Grove Park is a city park located in St. Louis right next to the Botanical Gardens (which we recommend visiting if you ever find yourself in St. Louis). The neighborhoods surrounding it are becoming increasingly gentrified, and the abundance of residential streets provided ample parking for the event.
Among the most notable attendees were
Seoul Taco (Korean-Mexican fusion),
Guerrilla Street Food (Filipino), and Chop Shop (sushi). Throughout the venue, various beer and wine stands had been set up for the thirsty attendees. We knew we were not going to be able to try every one of the trucks, and as I live near Seoul Taco's store location, before we even arrived I knew that I wanted Guerrilla Street Food. If I had any doubts before getting there, they quickly vanished as the line for that truck was much longer than any other line (and this was before the event had even officially started).
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| The Flying Pig: Slow roasted pork asado, chilis, calamansi, hoisin,sriracha served over rice and topped with a sous vide 1 hour egg. |
For part one of my food marathon, I went with Guerrilla Street Food's signature dish, The Flying Pig (above). The pork was incredibly tender and juicy, and the combination of chilis, hoisin, sriracha and the egg yolk provided an extra boost of moisture and flavor to the dish. My one (albeit minor) complaint was that I would have liked a little more spiciness. But from a business standpoint, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for their best-seller to be too spicy for some customers. For $7, it was a good deal overall, and it looked like the $9 burritos were a fair amount bigger than their bowl counterparts. As it is a food truck, Guerrilla Street Food obviously moves around on a daily basis (see website for location), but generally it seems like its located somewhere downtown, and at least once a week parks outside the Wells Fargo office complex near Saint Louis University. Needless to say, if I were a more ambitious and go-getter guy, I would absolutely stalk this food truck in pursuit of more. I need the Flying Pig burrito and I need it yesterday.
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| Chop Shop |
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| Menu |
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| GTO |
For my next stop, I tried out Chop Shop, which had recently been chosen as one of the best places to get sushi in St. Louis (and yes, I realize just how unimpressive that sounds). They are known for their jumbo rolls. These rolls do not come cheap (~$10-14), but Chop Shop does not skimp on the fish and overall I would compare one of their rolls in size to two standard restaurant sushi rolls (which can be around $7-9 a pop). I chose the GTO roll. The chopped spicy tuna inside had a sizable kick and the yamagobo (山ごぼう、pickled burdock root) was a nice touch and something I had not really seen much of before, but I'm also a sucker for pickled veggies. As the picture may indicate, I had the unfortunate luck of eating my sushi sitting on the ground, which due to the size of the roll and the various utensils and dishes available, did make it somewhat hard to apply soy-sauce or wasabi. A table may have helped, but overall the roll is a little unwieldy in my opinion (mine may have been inexpertly rolled as well). Once again, their location changes daily, but their facebook and twitter can help you find it.
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| Sea Salt and Nutella Crepe |
For dessert, we shared a sea salt and Nutella crepe from Holy Crepe. Basically, it tasted like it sounds. Combining sea salt and chocolate is hard to mess up, and if you are craving a crepe I would say this place is as good as any for $5.
This is a sweet shop food truck called the Sweet Divine. The line was consistently long and from what I could see the cupcakes and other sweets looked delicious. It seems like they do have a store in Historic Soulard in addition to their food truck.
I will be leaving for Japan in a few weeks, and from now on the restaurants and eateries featured will all be over there.
-B
