Kimchi fries from Chi'lantro BBQ

One of our favorite columns to read is The Frugal Traveler in the NY Times.  When you’re loooking for good, cheap eats, as he often is, street food is usually at the top of the list.

This week he wrote about Austin, where he spent a $100 weekend.  Now that’s frugal!

We went to Austin last year for the SXSW Festival, and while it cost more than $100, our food bill was quite low from eating at only food trucks and trailers.

While Seth doesn’t name specific street food vendors, he does mention the Austin Food Carts app, put out by our colleague Mike Krell.

Click here to read the full column – and if you ever have a chance to go to Austin – take it!

Fried chicken from Ms. P's Electric Cock

photo courtesy of Snappy Snacks

Last year we had the pleasure of attending SXSW in Austin, the live music capital of the world.  In addition to being a great place to see live music , Austin also has one of the best street food scenes in the country, although it’s quite a bit different from New York or LA.

There are a few food trucks in Austin, but most of the vendors are in converted trailers and vehicles of different types.  We saw everything from Airstream trailers to school buses serving great food.

We posted six installments of NYSF In Austin during our time there, including local favorites such as Along Came A Slider, Cazamance, Chi’Lantro and Ms. P’s Electric Cock.

fried mac and cheese & fried chicken from Ms. P's Electric Cock

We’re still getting email from SXSW, and they are trying to jump on the food truck bandwagon too.  The latest email from SXSW says to “contact them to find out how your company can both feed the masses and enjoy the exposure of a custom wrapped food truck in some of the most highly trafficked areas of SXSW.”

We did stop at one food truck last year sponsored by a drink company that was giving away free tacos.  It was so bad, we couldn’t even finish eating it.

If SXSW is pushing forward in this area, they better make sure the quality of the food being served is good.  If not, it will reflect poorly on SXSW, the sponsor, and worst of all, food trucks in general.

They need to make sure the food is as good as the bulgogi kimchi fries (pictured below) that we got from the Chi’Lantro truck parked across the street from our hotel .

The World’s Smallest Food Truck, located in Austin, Texas, sells döner kebaps, the Turkish sandwich similar to a Greek gyro.

What makes these so unique, in addition to being the only döner kebaps sold in Austin, is they are made and sold out of the back of a Smart Car.

Addie Broyles of the (Austin) American-Statesman wrote the story for Austin 360.com.

Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN

When Michael Heyne and Dominik Stein moved to Austin in 2009 to attend the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, they couldn’t believe no one was selling the street food that is easily the most popular fast food in Germany thanks to an influx of Turkish immigrants in the decades after World War II. They combined their business savvy and love of döner (pronouced “duhr-nah”, light on the “r”) to create Verts Kebap, which opened its first two stores in the Dobie Mall and on the Drag just as UT students were returning in August and recently debuted what they are calling the world’s smallest food truck tucked inside a Smart car.

“Döner didn’t exist here yet,” Heyne says. There are plenty of restaurants that sell gyro and shawarma, but döner meat isn’t just seasoned differently, it’s topped with a yogurt sauce that is heavy on the dill and doesn’t have any cucumber, which is essential to the tzatziki sauce found on gyros.

One of the biggest hurdles to starting a proper döner shop is getting the right kind of meat, usually a combination of shaved beef and lamb that is packed into a cone shape and rotated vertically on a spit in front of a broiler. Heyne connected with a Turkish man who moved to the U.S. from Germany and contracted with him to make the just the right combination of meat (90 percent beef, 10 percent lamb) and spices that is most reminiscent of the döner meat found throughout Germany and much of Europe.

Using pizza ovens imported from Italy, Heyne’s staff bakes round flatbreads that are slightly more tender than the traditional pita used in gyro but that can still be stuffed with ingredients. In addition to the traditional döner meat, Verts offers both roasted chicken and veggie patties that can be topped with a variety of sauces and toppings, such as lettuce, cabbage, tomato, onion, cucumber, corn and, if you want a more gyro-like sandwich, feta cheese. Customers can then choose from five sauces: house sauce made with dill, hot sauce, vinaigrette, spicy red and garlic.

Inspired by the breakfast taco, Heyne has added two breakfast kebaps to the Verts menu that will debut this weekend: one made with traditional breakfast taco ingredients such as bacon and cheese and another made with egg, shaved döner meat and vegetables.

Heyne knows the “World’s Smallest Food Truck” tucked inside the Smart car is a gimmick, but it’s a good one. He and Stein spent six months going back and forth with city health inspectors to make sure the car, including the heating and cooling elements, the retractable awning and the hand-washing and utensil-washing stations, were in compliance with city code for mobile vendors.

The whole unit runs off two car batteries and looks perfectly engineered kitchen that you might find on a space shuttle, and Heyne isn’t done tweaking it. He plans to add an espresso machine that fits into the unit in the trunk and has figured out a way to cut 100 pounds off the contraption before it goes in the second Smart car.

He had to outsource much of the engineering on the car because he couldn’t find anyone in the U.S. who was willing to work on such an unusual project. “I get excited about a challenge and want to do it,” he says.

With a kebap that clocks in at less than 580 calories full dressed, an untapped market within arm’s reach and a willingness to work around the clock and hire people who specialize in what he doesn’t, Heyne wants not only to run a successful business, but he also wants to change Americans’ perception of healthy fast food.

“Our main goal is to combine health and taste,” Heyne says. “In our market research, we found that in the customer’s mind, you are either healthy or tasty, but not both. We want to serve high-quality fast food that is always healthy, but where we don’t give up the taste.”

abroyles@statesman.com; 912-2504

Verts Kebap 2021 Guadalupe Street (inside the Dobie Mall)

2530 Guadalupe Street 214-802-8342

Verts Kebap’s food car, which is housed inside a Smart car, serves lunch from noon to 2 p.m. on Wednesdays through Fridays at the Just Brakes near 37th Street and Lamar Boulevard. Soon, the car will be serving the late night crowd downtown and breakfast elsewhere in Austin.

To find the latest on the kebap food truck, go to vertskebap.com/
food-trucks. [Austin 360.com].

Our friend and colleague, Tony Yamanaka, who runs FoodTrailersAustin.com, has recently set up the Food Trailer Alliance.  Last week, they had their 2nd meeting.

Similar to the NYC Food Truck Association, the organization consists of food trailer owners in Austin who are banding together to improve working conditions for all. 

Their mission statement is “to create a market in which food trailers, vendors and patrons alike can work together for the betterment of the industry. The austin food trailer alliance was founded in May of 2011, and is a free, donation-based organization.  The alliance is comprised of Central Texas-based mobile food vendors, who have agreed to abide by the austin food trailer alliance membership standards.  What to know more? Check out the FAQ.”

To keep up with news about the alliance follow @traileralliance on Twitter, and become a fan on Facebook

From the Austin Statesman: With more than 1,300 mobile food vendors opening, closing and moving all the time, it’s hard to keep up with the Austin food cart scene, even for owners.  Last year when the Austin City Council approved changes to the regulations that govern  mobile food vendors last year, Yamanaka says both trailer owners and outsiders were misinformed. “People weren’t really sure what was going on,” he says. “I didn’t want that to happen again.”

Yamanaka says that trailer owners are usually eager to help their peers, but they might not know others in the industry who work on the other side of town.

Trailers are still a relatively new aspect of the food scene, and people who are looking to open one, even those who have worked in the restaurant industry, aren’t entirely sure what to expect.

R.J. Oliver, who runs Bufalo Bob’s Chalupa Wagon at 600 S. Lamar Blvd., says he talked to a lot of trailer owners before opening his own, but it hasn’t been easy. “I’m new to this industry, and I’m trying to network as much as possible,” he says. “It’s hard to get people to realize what you have.”

Yamanaka also sees the alliance as a way to help connect trailers with potential customers. “You might know 10 trailers off the top of your head, but there are so many more out there,” he says. He hopes to set up trailer tours and other events to introduce Austinites to trailers they haven’t tried.

By building a network of people with various skills and specialties, Yamanaka wants to encourage alliance members to help one another find new locations, learn how to use social media to attract customers or troubleshoot problems that only fellow trailer owners would understand, like how to build a grease trap in an Airstream or dispose of gray water properly.

Yamanaka hopes members will also go in on large purchases together so they can get a discount on things like recyclable cups or grease disposal for biodiesel. [Austin Statesman]

Cazamance food trailer in Austin

For the final installment of NYSF In Austin, we’re bringing it all back home, and making a direct connection between Austin and New York.

What do Austin and New York have in common besides great street food, an awesome music scene, and lots of hipsters:  El Diablo Tacos, who started in the backyard of the Union Pool Hall in Brooklyn, and just last week opened a trailer in the backyard of the Barbarella and Swan Dive bars at 615 Red River in Austin.

Although we haven’t been to El Diablo Tacos in Brooklyn, they have enough of a reputation to be listed in our food truck directory.  It’s pretty funny that we are first trying them in Austin, but they are the perfect vendor for bringing it all back home.

shrimp taco

I’ve heard good things about their grilled corn, shrimp tacos and chorizo tacos ($3 each), but I had a special event to attend in an hour and didn’t want to get too messy, so I skipped the corn.  I was invited to a SXSW Grammy Block Party with Jimmy Vaughan and other artists performing, and I couldn’t attend with food on my shirt or corn stuck between my teeth.

The shrimp taco had a nice amount of fat, grilled shrimp topped with onions, tomato, cilantro and salsa verde.  I squeezed on some fresh lime and took a bite.

The shrimp taco was juicy and very tasty, with the shrimp taking a front seat, and the salsa verde providing some decent heat.  The onions and cilantro added to the flavor as well.

Unfortunately, a bunch of liquid came out the back of the taco when I took a bite, but I was being extra careful, and it all landed on the plate.  They only used one tortilla, but since I was eating it right away, there was no problem with tortilla breakage.  This was a yum taco!

chorizo taco

Next up was the chorizo taco.  It had the same toppings as the first taco, with crumbled, grilled chorizo instead of shrimp.

I really like chorizo, and this was good chorizo.  It wasn’t super spicy, but had a nice flavor that came out even more from being grilled.  There was a little liquid in this taco, but not as much as the shrimp taco, and the spicy salsa verde was even better with chorizo.

This was the first week El Diablo Tacos was open in Austin, and hopefully they will use a slotted spoon in the future when putting salsa verde and chopped tomatoes on the tacos.  Other than a little extra liquid, these were very good tacos.

I’ve heard really good things about the breakfast tacos at El Diablo Tacos in Brooklyn, and definitely have to get out there for brunch one weekend.

The El Diablo Tacos website is here, their twitter is here, and facebook is here.

One of the places Mike from Austin Food Carts recommended for my visit was Along Came A Slider.  He said they have real gourmet sliders, and his two favorites were scallop and lobster sliders.  That sounded awesome, and they were at 5th & Trinity, right in the middle of the SXSW madness.

When I got to the truck, I told Tyler, the chef and owner that Mike had recommended his scallop and lobster sliders, but Tyler said they had to cut down the menu for SXSW.  I didn’t realize that some of the more adventurous trucks and trailers were going to cut their menus down for SXSW, but in retrospect, it makes sense.  With such a large number of people, you need to keep things moving quickly.

And the WD Pig ($5) sounded like a real tasty slider anyway.  BTW, WD stands for Wired & Drunk.

Tyler (smiling in rear)

I had already eaten only a little while ago, so I only had room for one slider, and in this situation, you have to go for pork.  The picture below isn’t the best photo I’ve taken, but it gets the point across.  It might be called a slider, but it was the size of a regular sandwich.

The pork shoulder was rubbed with pecans and coffee before being cooked, which gave the meat a depth and richness that was wonderful.  There was a little bit of charring around the meat, which added even more flavor.

The bbq sauce was made with red wine, and the slider had jalapeno cole slaw on it too.  It wasn’t overly spicy, but had a nice zing to it.

I would have loved to try a scallop or lobster slider, but the WD Pig was a great meal.  I just wish I had more room to try another slider, because the barbacoa brisket looked amazing too!

Along Came A Slider’s website is here, twitter is here and facebook is here.

Thanks for the great meal Tyler.

I took a walk along 6th St, the street in Austin with many of the bars, clubs and restaurants.  After walking east past I-35, there were several lots filled with food trucks.  I’ll do another post with pictures of some of the cooler trailers, but this one is about dinner last night.

With all the choices, it was pretty tough to decide, but I settled on Tenderland, which has a fried pork tenderloin sandwich ($5.50) that looked pretty tasty. I wasn’t sure if I was going to run across another must-try trailer later on (like Ms P’s Electric Cock), so I went with the regular size sandwich instead of the plate-size sandwich.

When I ordered, she asked if I wanted the sandwich Southern-style or Midwestern-style.  She said the Southern-style was with pickles, onions, jalapenos and chipotle mayo.  Since I was in the South, I went for the Southern version.

She explained that in Iowa, where they were originally from, it was served with pickles, onions, ketchup and mustard.  I think I made the right choice.

Anyone who is familiar with the Schnitzel & Things truck in New York will recognize the fried pork tenderloin as schnitzel’s American cousin.  It’s a pounded, breaded and fried pork cutlet.

But here they put it on a roll with pickles, raw onion and chipotle mayo (or ketchup & mustard if you want).  They said the jalapenos were very spicy, so they put them on the side.  I tasted one, and it wasn’t any spicier than other jalapenos I’ve had, so I put some on the sandwich and dug in.

The pork was nice and soft from being tenderized.  It tasted real good on the roll with pickles, onions, jalapenos and chipotle mayo.  It was a bit spicy, but not killer.  Breaded items seem to absorb spiciness more than just plain meat.

And I love pickles on sandwiches with fried food.  I’ve said as much with falafel sandwiches, and it was true here as well.

This was another enjoyable meal from an Austin food trailer.  I’m just glad I had breath mints with me after I was done eating this sandwich.

I couldn’t find a website, but their facebook page is here.

I read about Chi’Lantro BBQ in my Austin research, and there they were, right across the side street from my hotel.  They have Korean-Mexican fusion tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and even a Korean burger, but everyone says you have to get the bulgogi kimchi fries ($6), so that’s exactly what I did for lunch today.

You get a choice of bulgogi: beef, chicken, pork or tofu.  I went with beef, the classic bulgogi meat.

Working from the bottom up, first there’s a base of french fries, on top of which they put the meat, kimchi, a little shredded jack and cheddar cheese, onions, cilantro and sesame seeds.

This is all topped off with sriracha sauce and “Magic Spicy” sauce, which is like a creamy chili mayo.

From the first bite to the last, it was pretty spicy, and the spiciness lingered for quite a while afterwards.  The beef was nicely marinated, and the kimchi was also spicy and somewhat vinegary, as it should be.

The fries were not crisp because of everything on top of them, but they made a good base for the other ingredients.  There were enough strong flavors that it was good to have a fairly plain, starchy base on which everything else rested.

This was a pretty intense meal for 1pm in the afternoon, before I had any drinks.  As the day progresses, and you drink more and more at SXSW, this is a great dish for after you’ve been partying all night.

Chi’lantro BBQ’s website is here, twitter is here and facebook is here.

Ms P (her first name is actually Perry too)

As I was walking back towards my hotel after having a Moroccan lamb sausage wrap at Cazamance, I noticed the unmistakable smell of fried chicken behind a fence.  I peered over the fence and saw a trailer in the backyard of Bar 96 at 96 Rainey Street with a crazy name – Ms P’s Electric Cock.

I had just eaten the wrap, but this smelled so good I had to try it.  Maybe they would have a small portion so I could just taste a piece or two.  Don’t want to be a glutton.  Luckily the wrap wasn’t a huge meal.

I walked around to the front of Bar 96, went inside, and walked out to the backyard.  When I walked up to the window, I saw they had 2 pieces of fried chicken for $4.30.  OK, that would do.

After I ordered, I started talking to the guy in the trailer who was cooking (sorry, I forgot to get his name).  He told me it was only their 5th day open.

He was in the process of finishing an order of elote for someone else – grilled corn on a stick with lime-spiked aioli, cojita cheese, and shaved pasilla pepper.  It looked great, but a man can only eat so much.  I did take a picture though.

I told the chef about New York Street Food and gave him a card and sticker for the trailer.  I was telling him about some of the great street food in New York while he was frying my chicken.  He said he would give me a little mac and cheese on the house just so I could taste it.  Mac and cheese is not a light side dish, and I had just eaten, but he was being really nice, and I couldn’t be rude and say no thanks.

When the meal came out, it was anything but a small taste.  There were a leg and thigh, mac and cheese, a roll and a big, fat roasted jalapeno pepper.  Wow, did this smell awesome!

Trying the chicken first, the batter was nice and crisp with tasty seasonings in the batter.  I’m not going to try to decipher it – let’s just say it was really good.  Inside the batter, the chicken was as moist and juicy as I’ve seen.  When frying is done right, it keeps the juices inside and the meat moist.  This was done right!  I’m not usually one for legs and thighs, but when it’s this good, no problem.

The mac and cheese was amazing too.  They batter and fry it, and serve it with aioli infused with truffle oil!  It was as good as it sounds.  Mac and cheese always has a creamy richness, but the truffle oil gave it a depth of flavor you don’t usually get with mac and cheese.

To finish off the meal, there was a really soft roll and a really big jalapeno pepper.  I know they do things big in Texas, and this pepper was no exception.

After the meal, Ms P was back from wherever she went for a few minutes, and I told her how much I enjoyed the meal.  We talked for a bit, and it came out that her first name is Perry too, and it’s spelled the same way!  I’ve met a few women with the same name as me, but it was never spelled the same way too.

Perry worked in technology for many years, and wanted to do something different with her life.  Well, this certainly qualifies.  It must be quite satisfying serving people such delicious food.

There were a few other things on the menu like Blue Hen Cole Slaw (made with blue cheese) and Dirty Black Eyed Peas, but one other item really caught my eye.

The Cock’s Ben-e-dict, which is coming soon (no pun intended), and is a waffle topped with fried chicken, fried green tomato, and a poached egg, drizzled with a maple syrup hollandaise!  Add a Bloody Mary (or two) for a perfect weekend brunch.

Ms P’s website is here, facebook is here, and twitter is here.

For my first meal in Austin, I went to Cazamance at 90 Rainey Street, which was recommended by Mike at Austin Food Carts.  Cazamance’s chef and co-owner is Iba Thiam, who grew up in Senegal in West Africa, but also lived in France and New York prior to Austin – and his food is influenced by all of these places.

I asked what Cazamance meant and was told it was the place in Senegal where Chef Iba’s father is from.

I also asked Chef Iba what dish he recommended, and he said the Moroccan Lamb Sausage Wrap for $8.  Sounded good to me!

When you walk down Rainey St, there’s an open area with about 10 tables set up, and the Cazamance trailer is to the right, with strings of lights hung around the area.

I ordered food and sat down, and about 5-10 minutes later, my dinner was brought over to the table.  Inside the wrap was lamb sausage, thinly-sliced cucumber, lettuce, sweet tomato relish and harissa.

The first bite could be described as warm and spicy.  The wrap and sausage were warm, and the harissa added some spiciness.  The lamb sausage wasn’t spicy, but it was flavorful, and the harissa was just about the right amount of spiciness.  The tomato relish added a little sweetness to the wrap, and the cucumber was nice and cool.

This was a delicious wrap for dinner.  Thank you Mike for suggesting it.

Someone told me Cazamance had bunny chow, a South African dish I originally wrote about in an article on the World’s Fare bustaurant in L.A., and wanted to try.  I guess their menu has changed, but this menu is pretty darn good too.