The Secret Waterfront Wonton Truck

A rare sighting of the Wonton Truck on a Chinatown shopping stop

You scuttle along the Embarcadero until you are in front of the gaping maw of a bulkhead building.  Glancing over your shoulder to see if you are being followed, you duck into the building and peer into the gloomy interior of the long, barnlike structure.  In the distance you can barely make out the outline of a van, silhouetted against a huge incongruous Union Jack. You trudge along a railroad track, a vestige of busier times at the port, for nearly 300 yards, along the way breathing in the heady aroma of fresh-caught fish emanating from a fish wholesaler at the pier.   Eventually you find yourself standing in front of a mobile canteen.

You know what you want, and hand $7.00 to the cheerful woman.  In a few minutes, she delivers to you a large, steaming hot container of savory soup chock full of plump, meaty pork and beef wontons, and sauteed fresh vegetables and mushrooms.  It's a tasty, filling potion guaranteed to cure any flu.  As you turn to leave with your bounty, you glance up at the lengthy bill of fare posted on a signboard.  Along with an extensive list of Hunan-style Chinese food  it includes quesadillas and other Mexican specialties, perhaps a tribute to the truck's former use. You vow to return to try the Mongolian menudo.

Pulp fiction?  An outtake from Les Bas Fonds de Frisco? No, it's all true, even the Mongolian menudo on the menu.  The truck is The Wonton Stand, a.k.a. Eva's Catering, and the pier is Pier 33, hard by the Cruise ship terminal.  It's no underground operation, but a fully permitted, fully equipped food truck of the classic taco truck mold.  Eva is real, and her partner is reportedly a former cook for  Brandy Ho's Hunan restaurant (I'm still wondering about that Mongolian menudo.) So check it out.


One more thing, though, it's best (as it always is) to have a Plan B.  I went looking for it recently, at high noon on hump day, and it was nowhere to be seen.  Had Eva retired, or moved to Oxnard?  Apparently not.  "They come and they go," said the testy warehouseman I interrogated. "Sometimes they are here in the morning, and sometimes they are here in the afternoon.  Sometimes I see them, and sometimes I don't."


Maybe that's what the word "inscrutable" means.

Off the Grid Celebrates First Anniversary

It was just a year ago today that Matt Cohen's SF Carts Project, in collaboration with La Cocina, launched a brave experiment -- Off the Grid at Fort Mason Center, a weekly gathering of curated food trucks and food stalls. To use the old cliche, the rest is history. Off the Grid at Fort Mason Center has tripled in size (both in its footprint and number of vendors) and has branched out across the city to five new locations, offering one or more events six days a week. It recently launched a highly successful weekly Berkeley event, and Marin and San Mateo openings are just around the corner. Cohen got into the business of being a street food "facilitator" after futilely battling the bureaucratic machine on behalf of his own food truck dream, and now finds public agencies and civic groups beseeching him for a little OTG street food love on their turf. How sweet that must taste.

Last night's event also marked the one-year anniversary of one of Off the Grid's stalwarts, the IZ IT Fresh Grill truck. Through their connections to the San Francisco Chinese community a spectacular performance by a championship team of lion dancers was secured for the event. It was also in front if the IZ IT Fresh truck that the flying wedge of Chandon in the picture above appeared. I didn't stick around long enough to see what happened to all that bubbly, but I'm guessing it wasn't poured on anyone's head.

Mazel tov and 恭喜恭喜 to Off the Grid and the IZ IT Fresh truck!

Mentioned: @sfcarts, @lacocinasf, @IZITfreshgrill

Hugh Schick's Coming New Shtick: The "Brewtruc" -- A Mobile Microbrew Beer Lounge

Hugh Schick, Executive Chef and one of the brains behind the le truc “bustaurant” (which brought on-board food truck dining to the Bay Area) loves good beer. In his Off the Grid:Fort Mason Center debut, he ragged on Matt Cohen for not providing decent beer at the event bar. It's probably a coincidence, but Off the Grid:Fort Mason Center 2.0 now features a separate craft beer bar. But Schick, who’s largely absent from le truc's 4th and Brannan home these days (it’s rumored that he’s being squeezed out by the truck's investors for not being sufficiently housebroken) wants to take the pairing of haute truck food with craft beer a giant step further. A genial obsessive that the late Warren Oates would have liked to play on screen, he’s developing a craft beer truck (“the brewtruc”) that will legally serve the finest new local microbrewery products on board at food truck events, and even in transit.

Working with an old yellow school bus (which le truc also started life as), he’s planning a clubby interior with 6 taps, leather seating, and lots of hardwood, brass, copper, and plants, but no kitchen. He’s promising collaborative and small-batch beers from the area's hottest nanobreweries (Pacific Brewing Lab, Elizabeth Street, etc.) along with bigger names like Dogfish Head and Lagunitas, and perhaps even favorite Muddy Puddle. How has he handled the legal niceties? He’ll be operating under a limousine license, and you will have to secure a reservation before boarding and enjoying his offerings. He’s hoping to smooth the process using an on-line agent for last-minute reservations, should you spot the truck and develop a sudden thirst.

Follow the brewtruc's Facebook page or this blog for updates on the status of Hugh's project.

Mentioned: @eatletruc, @trucmeister, @PacBrewLab, @ESBAle, @dogfishbeer, @lagunitasbruhws, @muddypuddle

Action on Jackson: Quickly/Kobe Bento, Peninsula/P&R, and a Star Lunch Mystery

A bed check today of the 600 block of Kearny Street in San Francisco's Chinatown revealed some recent and imminent changes to this street's always solid and variegated roster of Chinese eats. Most spectacular, at least in a visual sense, was the appearance of Kobe Bento by Quickly in the space most recently occupied by Ton Yong Thai on the Northwest corner of Kearny and Jackson. This location, which I first knew as Meilong Village, seems to change hands every year or two, but judging by the activity there Kobe Bento may be around for a while. The strategic positioning of Kobe Bento across the street from the soon-to-open City College campus was probably a consideration to Quickly. (According to Trademarkia, Kobe Bento is a registered trademark of Quickly, the Taiwanese bubble tea chain.} Along with the usual boba house suspects, the comestibles here include takoyaki (8 pieces for $4.95), something I'll have to try, at least once.

Further up the street, and further up the scale of gourmetise, the moribund Pearl City Seafood (641 Jackson) recently reinvented itself as Peninsula Seafood. At least that's what the big new hanging sign calls it. On the awning it's also called P&R Seafood; maybe they are inspired by the success of Z&Y two doors away. It's unclear whether the restaurant is under new management or has only received a makeover; ABC records still list Pearl City as the owner of the liquor license. The new signage also promises Hong Kong style dim sum; that was a staple of Pearl City.

Last and least (in size, anyway), the 605 Jackson space vacated several years ago by the tiny Star Lunch, of stinky tofu fame, is finally getting some attention. The Star Lunch/上海小吃 sign (which I've long coveted) has finally been removed and a ladder was newly visible above the papering in the window. The space was big enough for only a counter and a solitary two-top; here's hoping it will become the humble noodle or dumpling bar I've fantasized about putting there myself.

Central Subway's First Fallout: San Sun Restauuant Relocates

I've been opposed to the Central Subway (a.k.a. Chinatown Subway) project from the outset. It just seems like too much expense and too much disruption for too long a time to effect a five minute improvement in travel time from Third and Market to Chinatown. Fortunately, the impact on Chinatown will apparently be limited to the taking of one building for the Chinatown Station site, but what a building it is, housing four budget-priced restaurants and one purveyor of house-made sausage and cured meats. These are You's Dim Sum, Little Paris Restaurant, San Sun Restaurant and Joy Hing BBQ Noodles on Stockton Street, and Wycen Meats arount the corner on Washington Street.

The first shoe to fall was the move, last weekend, of San Sun (a.k.a. Tam Duong) Restaurant to larger new quarters on Washington Street. San Sun is a popular Vietnamese-Fukienese-Chaozhouese-Malaysian mashup with a prodigious noodle menu. According to my Chinatown source, San Sun received $250,000 in relocation assistance from the City, but spent ten times that to buy and renovate the building at 848 Washington St. which formerly housed the Great Oriental Restaurant. Fortunately, it's twice the size of the old San Sun, because they'll need to sell a lot of noodles to pay for the upgrade.

As for the other restaurants on the block, Little Paris will probably be the most missed, being unique in providing Vietnamese "bento" box carryouts in addition to serving creditable pho and banh mi. My contact opined that it probably will not be replaced, as the owners were already on the verge of retirement, and there is already a family-run branch of Little Paris on Clement St. You's Dim Sun also has another, more popular branch in Chinatown (on Broadway). My friend had no clue as to the fate of Joy Hing BBQ Noodle House.

Mentioned: @Central_Subway

World Business Channel report on Off the Grid

I'm a big fan of Off the Grid and its people, subjects that will most likely come up often in this blog. For starters, this video is the best overview I've see so far on the who, what, and why of OtG. It focuses on the mothership Fort Mason Center venue, where I can usually be found on Friday nights