Dim Sum Truck

I enjoy dim sum, but sometimes I am not in the mood for the hustle and bustle of a busy Chinese restaurant. Dim sum usually ends at 2 pm and restaurants are pretty crowded if you don't get there fairly early in the morning. Being able to eat dim sum any time during the day? FINALLY...I was excited to hear that there was such a truck. So, I ordered what I would normally order at my favorite dim sum restaurant, baked bbq buns, shrimp shu mai and egg custard tarts. I also got their duck taco.

I took a bite out of their shrimp shu mai.  The skin was a little rubbery. The filling tasted more fishy than like pork and shrimp. It tasted better after dipping it in the sauce that it comes with. It tasted as if they were cooked, put in the refrigerator and heated in the microwave.  They were also pretty small compared to the typical ones served during Dim Sum. Although this wasn't that great, it was probably the best of all the items I got.

Next was the bake bbq buns. I took a bite, and the bread was crispy. Its texture was as if it was placed in a toaster oven. It wasn't soft and steamy. Usually when I order this, I see a glaze on top of the bread that makes it a little sweet and makes it look shiny. This pork bun didn't have that. The bbq pork filling  was scant and not very tasty.  The sauce was on the watery side and there wasn't much flavor. I was really disappointed as this is my favorite thing to eat at a dim sum restaurant.

The Peking duck taco is not an ordinary dim sum item, but I love duck so I had to try this. The duck was dry and tasted overcooked. Like the skin of the chicken, duck skin tastes its best when it is crispy. But with me, unlike chicken, I can eat duck skin soft. In this taco, the duck skin was soft but it didn't have any fat underneath the skin so to me it wasn't as flavorful as it could have been. The sauce had good flavor but the problem was if there was no sauce, the duck taco wouldn't have had flavor. I would've liked to have been able to enjoy it with the duck being the star.

On to the egg custard. Looking at the picture, it doesn't seem appealing. Eating it, well, it was as I suspected. There was way too much crust and not enough filling. The crust wasn't buttery or flaky and tasted a little stale. The top of custard didn't have it's normal sheen. It was like the custard curdled. The flavor of the custard was ok.  The entire thing just seemed way too overbaked.  It may have been bad timing but it appeared like they didn't put much thought in the food put out.

Overall, I was a  diasppointed with most of  the items I got. The idea of the truck is genius, the execution and authenticity of the  flavors of the dishes, not so much. The service was good, the guys who ran the truck were really nice, but I would have to pass on this truck next time.

Finally got my mouth around a Greasy Wiener

The Greasy Wiener claims to serve New Jersey style dogs with West Coast flavor.  Jersey style dogs are deep fried, that's all I know about them.  Never been to Jersey and never had a Jersey style dog. So I wouldn't be able to say if these were "authentic" to Jersey dogs.

I ordered the Iggy's Bleu, The Bomb and a plain hot dog. Yup, plain. Nothing on it, just the bun and the dog. My daughter is weird like that. When we got the plain hot dog, he gave us two. He explained that when it was fried it shrunk more than it should so he gave us two to compensate for getting a smaller hot dog than what is normally served. I will assume nothing was wrong with it because she and my son ate both of them.

The Bomb is a bacon wrapped hot dog topped with grilled onions, chili, cheese, and a dil spear with mustard spread on the bun.  Snap, Crackle and Pop  isn't just for cereal anymore. When I bit into The Bomb, I definitely felt the Snap from the crispiness of the outside of the hot dog, then your teeth experience the Crackle of the crisp bacon and fresh toppings, and finally you experience the Pop of all the flavors as they bounce in your mouth.  This hot dog had a great balance of flavors and .

Although it’s called The Greasy Wiener, I think their sliders stole the show. The Bacon Bleu Igg’s. 2 Angus beef sliders topped with grilled onions, blue cheese, crisp bacon and special sauce inside King’s Hawaiian rolls. The pattie was so juicy and it wasn’t from the sauce or the bleu cheese. You could tell it was made to order because it was still warm and the bacon was still crispy. Bleu cheese is very strong, but in this slider, it wasn’t overpowering. The only thing I wished was that there was bacon in every bite.   

Overall this was a solid experience. Nothing we tried tasted under seasoned, over cooked or worse undercooked. There were no out of the box menu items. The owners didn’t do a fusion or twist on anything. Just traditional hot dogs and sliders but made very well. Not only was the food good, the service was awesome. Thank you Adam and team!!

Chunk N Chip Part 2

My first experience with this truck wasn't great, so of course my review of it wasn't either. Their marketing director, Howie, responded to my review of them. He thought that the Moo-lan Rouge was a quality issue that particular night and that the cookies were definitely not supposed to be the way they were. Because there were so many other BOO-Yahs I wanted to try I was open to give them another shot. There was a new BOO-Yah combo that looked good but was advised  to stick with the snicker doodle or sugar cookies since the spice the same spice was used in their chocolate chip cookies.

When we got there, I saw the new BOO-Yah. It was two chocolate chip cookies and sandwiched in between was chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream. Although I was given the heads up that the chocolate chip cookies had the same spice the chocolate brownie cookies had, I ordered it as is anyway. I was also skeptical on getting the Moo-lan rouge again but I had to.  My love for red velvet and wanting to really like it gravitated me to ordering it again.

The first thing I did when we got the order was touched the cookies. The cookies were warm and they were soft. My experience this time around was already different than the first. I broke off a piece of the chocolate chip cookie. It still had that little spice taste, but the taste wasn't as dominant as it was in the brownie cookie. I took a bite of that BOO-Yah, and it was good. I think the chocolate ice cream mellowed out the spice of the cookie. The tanginess and sweetness of the raspberry complimented the cookie really well.

On to the  Moo-lan rouge.. Was I going to experience disappointment again? The cookie was soft, so that was a good start. I broke a piece of the cookie off and smelled it. It smelled more like red velvet than the first time. I ate it and voila! Red velvet is how it tasted. I'm still not a fan of the white fudge ice cream with macadamias so next time I'd order it with vanilla bean ice cream, but it was really good.

This was a complete 180 from the first time I tried this truck. When I first tried it and took a bite out of the BOO-Yah, the cookies were hard so when I bit into it the cookies pressed the ice cream back so I didn't get that ice cream sandwich experience and had to eat it with a fork in order for me to eat the ice cream and cookie together. This time I was able to bite into two soft cookies and have the ice cream come with it. I'd have to say that I'm really glad I gave it another try.  I would definitely get another Moo-lan Rouge BOO-Yah and would try some of their others too.