9 am
1 bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds
12:20 pm
South Philly Experience
1 cheesesteak, Whiz wit
1 can of Diet Coke
1 piece of peanut butter Tastykakes
As promised, I ate at a food truck. Hey, I actually kept an empty promises. My ex-girlfriends must be shocked. Yesterday, I made a parallel between the frozen yogurt craze two years ago to the current food truck craze and the one common element between the two. That’s right, Koreans. There were obviously a lot of taco trucks in Los Angeles. But then came Kogi BBQ, who came up with a novel idea (Korean BBQ’s good. So are tacos. Let’s slap them together) with cooking prowess. Soon, people were willing to wait in impossibly long lines for and those not in line were wondering why. And guess who started that trend? Yep, a Korean guy. And it promptly got ripped off to death. I’m not surprised though. It’s within Korean business ethos to blatantly steal a good idea and imitate it endlessly while it’s profitable. It happened with frozen yogurts and it’s happening with food trucks. I have no idea if this food bubble can sustain itself (reminds you of a certain nation’s housing crisis, doesn’t it). Who knows where it’s all headed. Actually, I do. It’s headed to Chicago and New York. Waiting in line in -12 wind chill? Sounds delightful.
The food truck craze is obviously not limited to wily Korean entrepreneurs. There are trucks for every type of cuisine imaginable (here’s a handy aggregate for all the food trucks) For the purpose of writing about food trucks, I went to the closest one to my apartment, South Philly Experience. When I got to their lunch-time location, they were having parking issues with a nearby restaurant. Not surprised. When I worked at Comcast, food trucks gathered at Mid-Wilshire like guidettes at Jersey Shore (what a show!). The neighboring restaurants promptly got the cops to harass them. It didn’t stop the trucks though though. Now there are a bevy of choices. You know what a restaurant should do if they want to retain customers? OFFER GOOD FOOD. Toshi was a horrible, evil eatery over there. Now they’re closing GOOD. Charles Darwin mapped this all out on his second voyage on the Beagle. The strongest survive. We as consumers stand to benefit.
Anyway, back to South Philly Experience. It’s instantly one of the more authentic cheesesteak experiences in LA. I got the “Whiz wit” (Cheese Whiz and onions) even though I prefer provolone. It’s been over a decade since I had a Whiz wit though, so why not. The sandwich was a tad dry and I wished the onions were finely diced and not coarsely chopped (get more onion flavor that way like a White Castle slider). But the merger of the soft Amaroso roll, meat, cheese, satisfied me immensely. I chased that sandwich with a peanut butter Tastykake. Hey, I might as well go all out with the Philadelphia thing. Fuck the Phillies though. Especially if they get Roy Halladay.
3:50 pm
Locali
1 Popshop strawberry-lemonade popsicle
1 bottle of water
It seems like the entire United States is dealing with massive cold and snowstorms. It’s cold in LA too. It’s like 50-something during the day. I can’t wear shorts during the day. Although it was still sunny and warm enough to crave a popsicle. A fancy, artisanal popsicle at that. It was actually lovely strolling LA yesterday. Anyway, enough about me. Good luck traversing the dangerous, icy roads, non-Angelenos.
8:20 pm
1/2 DiGiorno’s supreme pizza
My friend Ryan invited me over to eat pizza while watching football. “Where did you get this pizza from, ” I asked him. “Guess,” he replied. Pizza Hut? Papa John’s? “No, it’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno!” He deserves a punch in the cock for that joke.
8:30 pm
1 rum n’ coke
3 glasses of water
This is the swill I willingly put in my body. No, not the Spray n’ Wash. If the word “Premium” is on the label, it adds a touch of class and that $5 you paid for the entire bottle seems like a great deal. It gets you drunk and it produces a horrible hangover. That’s $5 well spent, I say.
Eat With Joe 