Take a Flyswatter

The Rose Bush Food Truck Court
2301 San Pedro Avenue

(between Huisache and Mulberry streets)

Malik's Phamous Philly Cheesesteaks
food truck

Ay Papi Puerto Rican
food truck

We made our first real foray into the not-really-exciting world of food trucks tonight when we went with another couple to the recently-opened Rose Bush, a few blocks down the avenue from our houses. When we went last night there were only two vehicles in place, so we got two dishes from each and split them four ways.

From Malik's the choices were the original Philly sandwich, and a veggies-only version. The Philly was, frankly, pretty disappointing, possibly because, you know, it's a Philly cheesesteak: (a) it'd be hard to live up to the reputation that sandwich has acquired, reinforced on a recent visit to Philadelphia where they talk about the sandwich the way we talk about hot weather; and (b) they wanted to put what they call "whiz-cheese" on it, so we opted for no cheese. And a cheesesteak sandwich without cheese is like a guard dog without legs; it'll still bark, but can only bite if you give it your hand. There's just something missing, and I can't see how using something called "whiz-cheese" can be any kind of improvement.

Unless, of course, it's whatever chemical concoction was used to

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cover the veggies-only sandwich. It looked like melted cheese, if a little on the white side; it had the consistency of fairly-good-quality cheese, such as is found on your average pizza; and it had a mild cheesy flavour, such as you would experience in an underaged Kraft product. It was laid on in a pretty generous layer and held the thoroughly cooked onions and peppers together (though it didn't really stick to the soft, warm oily bread) and stretched just like cheese on a mediocre pizza. It may not have been the best quality, nutritionally speaking, but of the four sandwiches we tried, the veggie Philly won top honours for the evening. And the cheese (or whatever cheese-like concoction it was) would have improved the other sandwich.

 

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The other two were from the puertoriqueno mobile kitchen called "Ay Papi," which our neighbour tells us is a reference to some baseball player. Whatever.  This food truck -- trailer, actually -- offers a limited menu of 3 or 4 sandwiches, tostones, a few other sides, and canned drinks. We chose the cubano, a traditional Caribbean pressed sandwich; and a three-meat construct, the name of which I now forget. Both sandwiches were built in traditional hoagie-style rolls. The cubano was good for the type, though not outstanding; the other, larger sandwich was an esculent hodgepodge. It was impossible to separate the various ingredients either by flavour or texture, and overall both aspects of the product were the culinary equivalent of mud-brown. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good in any particular. And both sandwiches were marred by the slowness with which they were produced.

The prices for Malik's sandwiches were about what you'd expect, at roughly ten bucks apiece.  The sandwiches from Ay Papi cost about the same or a little more, but somehow seemed less worth it even before we'd tried them.

And here's one more curious failing to set against this food truck: at 7PM on a Friday night, with their busy time just beginning, they were already down to their last Diet Coke. I ordered two but could only get one. That is a failure of preparation on the most basic level.

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The place itself, the Rose Bush food truck court, is a converted auto-service shop, with a large paved area enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. It's family- and pet-friendly, though no one had brought their dog. In the far corner is a tetherball set-up to distract the kids; it worked well for that. The building provides restrooms, which were reasonably clean and adequately appointed, and seating in the former service bay (which, even with a fan running full speed, was intolerable in the early summer heat). The outside yard was washed with a comforting breeze that could do nothing to keep the hordes of flies away. There were sufficient trash receptacles with easy-to-close lids to help, but as soon as our first sandwiches arrived, so did more flies than you will find in a small back yard occupied by three large dogs. The picnic tables had paper towel rollers mounted on each, which was good, and there were plenty of paper towels, plus a service bar with barely-useful plastic utensils, napkins and a few essential condiments. The seating was adequate, except that one of the two planks used to make the picnic-table bench had sagged, quickly making it uncomfortable Had there been another table open, I would have insisted we move, but there wasn't; the entire outdoor seating area was taken up by our other neighbours.