Elisa Figueroa

2012 L.A. Street Food Fest at the Rose Bowl

Six days post-Tacolandia is, maybe, more than enough rest to prep for the return of the largest gathering of street food purveyors in the Southland on Saturday, June 29. Returning to the Rose Bowl, this year's fest has been pushed a month up, meant to avoid the sweltering heat of July as experienced in events past. (Although there's no telling with the weather these days.)

Over 75 vendors -- from food trucks to pop-ups to restaurants -- are expected to show up. There will be appearances from the familiar, such as Grilled Cheese Truck, Wicked Kitchen, Bigmista's BBQ, Starry Kitchen, Ceviche Project and Plant Food for People. There will also be quite a few new faces to the event as well, including Badmaash and D'elish at Tiara Cafe.

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Anne Fishbein

A Prime Time Cuisine food truck customer

From the Department of Verisimilitude, or maybe the Ministry of Silly Hats, comes news from Variety that Jon Favreau (Cowboys & Aliens, Iron Man, Swingers) is starting his own food truck. Or at least he'll play a guy starting his own food truck, which is close enough, right? Favreau will write, direct and star in the upcoming movie Chef, in which he'll portray a chef who loses his restaurant job and starts a food truck to "reclaim his artistic promise and reclaiming [sic] his estranged family." Because that happens all the time in real life.

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Courtesy VICE

Truckers in the Wild hosts Max and Eli Sussman

Back in the early 2000's, I pitched VICE magazine's then-editor some food content. He basically scoffed at me. "Food?" he said, "That's just not the demographic we're going for." So I've watched with great interest as VICE has produced more and more food content over the last few years. Obviously food is way hipper than it was 10 years ago, but to work for VICE this content has to be painfully, outrageously, flawlessly hip.

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Screenshot of LudoTruck's Twitter page

Liezl Estipona

See also:
*10 Best Carne Asada Fries in Los Angeles

Think back, if you can, to a time before food fusion and "mobile gourmet dining experiences." When late night eating meant a 24-hour Subway, 4 a.m. Thai joint or one of the city's finest taco trucks. Remember the off-white loncheros that have crawled the construction sites throughout Southern California for decades, the feisty machines that vie for avenue space out in Highland Park, the hard to find but always worth it trucks and trailers that have delivered for years on a simple promise to us all: in Los Angeles, great Mexican food can be had, day or night, for very little money, from somewhere nearby.

That social contract is still alive and well, providing us all with the burritos, tacos, sopes, mulitas and quesadillas that this city runs on. Nearly everyone has a "local," their own favorite taco truck that has fed them when they needed it most, or provided a quick meal when the fridge was blowing tumbleweeds. But there are also those undeniable titans of the genre, trucks so beloved to this city that they belong to us all. We stand in line after the bars let out, we drive across town in 7 p.m. traffic, we make sure to carry cash and practice our Spanish on the way over. Of the thousands upon thousands of fantastic loncheros worthy of such dedication, we think these are the ten best taco trucks that Los Angeles has to offer.

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Christine Chiao

Egg Slut Avo Burger

Place: Egg Slut Truck. (Note: At its current schedule, the truck can be found at Handsome Coffee Roasters Mondays through Thursdays from noon to 4 p.m.)

Atmosphere: Your best option is to pair your order with an espresso with milk from Handsome Coffee Roasters just a few steps away. The barista might jokingly give you permission to have your food inside as long as you share, which is understandable once you try the Fairfax. This is one of the better (scrambled) egg sandwiches in town.

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G. Snyder

Porchetta Sandwich at the Porchetta Truck

There I was, around 10 p.m. on a school night, driving up and down Fairfax Boulevard, squinting to spot a food truck that I had only learned the whereabouts of earlier that day, hoping that the kitchen's supplies hadn't run out, the cops hadn't chased everyone off, or the location hadn't been switched at the last moment. Was this 2009? To borrow a phrase from Yogi Berra, it felt like déjà vu all over again.

But unlike the days when Kogi BBQ Truck swarmed with hourlong lines, the crowd outside Porchetta Truck was decidedly sparse, which is probably how chef Evan Funke prefers it. The truck had parked outside the Dime, a dive bar in the Fairfax Arts district, on a night when the temperature had dipped to frigid "actual winter" levels. A few curious bar-goers wandered out to see what was up; the line chefs cooking at Animal apparently had plans to visit after dinner service.

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Evan Funke's Instagram

Chef Evan Funke

There are few dishes so good that they deserve a whole food truck devoted specifically to them. But then again, there are some that deserve not only their own truck but whole restaurants, even maybe museums. This is true of porchetta, the Italian ode to pork that Italy's Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies has designated as a prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale (P.A.T.), or a regional food with protected status. It is this dish that will be the only thing Evan Funke serves at his new food truck. Bless him.

Funke says the porchetta food truck was his answer to impatience, really, since he's still waiting on the opening of his new restaurant Bucato, which is taking over the old Beacon location in Culver City, hopefully by the end of the year. Yes, that's only a few weeks away, but if you want to cook, you want to cook now. You also want to keep the chefs who are working with you cooking. Thus the truck, which will debut this Friday at Abbot Kinney First Friday in Venice.

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Anne Fishbein

Chego

Roy Choi has blogged the news that Chego has shut down for repairs. Never fear though, the chef has exactly the solution you'd expect from the man who invented the Kogi BBQ Truck: a Chego truck. Which vehicle is now parked outside Chego, kind of like a mobile home outside a home.

The dining room is closed. The whole place inside is getting gutted. So we are moving the tables outside and serving out of a truck. It's actually pretty fucking cool. Dress warm. Come with a sense of humor. And let's camp out.

This is in effect NOW.

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B. Mesirow

The strip of Sunset between Mohawk St. and Elysian Park Ave., more or less the beating heart of Echo Park, has become a destination for drinking. One can, with a series of walks not long enough to raise your heart rate, hop from craft beer palace to dimly lit record spinning mini-lounge to classic dive bar to cop bar turned hipster dance party and beyond. As excellent as its cluster of bars is, though, it is the other component of a great night out that really makes Echo Park shine -- tacos.

That stretch of Echo Park is home to three well-established taco trucks, Tacozone, Tacos Arizas, and El Flamin' Taco, and each has its own loyal following. After hearing years worth of fanboy chatter and taco trolling we decided it was time to perform a truly unbiased scientific experiment, and for the good of the neighborhood we set out to determine and weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each truck. What follows is your Echo Park taco truck guide.

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