All the Taco Trucks

Alternate Title: Defying the law of diminishing returns

I received the most amazing assignment ever--rank all of the taco trucks in Memphis. Since I can only eat so many tacos, I enlisted the help of my firstborn. He had to be bribed with a promise to visit the Apple Store along the way, but then he was totally on board. It was actually quite amazing to pick him up from his dad's house on Saturday and not only have him be dressed and ready to go, but to also seem excited.

I explained the law of diminishing returns to him and we discussed different criteria we might use to rank the trucks and it was all quite civilized.

I don't want to ruin my upcoming Thrillist piece, but I will say a few things about our FIVE HOUR TACO EATING ADVENTURE just to build some anticipation.



I love the El Burrito truck on Jackson. It was our first stop, so you know the whole diminishing returns might come into play, but they had a great selection and the owner was a doll.



He had the best salsa of the day too--it was a creamy avocado based sauce. And I now know that a taco is not complete without a pickled carrot.



Satchel Snapchatted along the way. I have no idea what he said.



Across from El Burrito is Jalapeno's, which may or may not be affiliated with this little place just a few feet away.



I was tempted to try it, but worried about not having enough room for all of the other tacos in my future.

On Summer Avenue, we discovered this RV Pupuseria. Tacos are more of an afterthought here, but still tasty. We need to go back and eat a pupusa.



The Los Jarochos truck was closed due to the owner being on vacation, so we were forced to go into the ice cream side. It's like a little La Michoacana. Great pops and ice cream, and my favorite--chocolate covered bananas. With sprinkles!



Next, we came across this truck on White Station, but it had started raining and no one was inside despite the "Open" sign being lit up.



And then we searched and searched, but the famed Chili Verde with the strawberry salsa was nowhere to be found. (Anyone know where it is now?)

We headed toward Hickory Hill and that's where we found the Los Compadres truck. I don't *think* it's affiliated with the restaurant. (I asked but didn't get a straight answer due to my inability to speak Spanish.) At first I thought it might be filling up it's tank, but it is fully operational right between the BP pumps.



There was a cooler full of jumbo Mexican Cokes and I couldn't resist. I think it was my first Coke in three years, maybe?



Yep frozen treats, a Coke, and more tacos than I could count all in one day! Decadence!

One of the coolest parts of our adventure was collecting all of the different salsas. As far as I could tell they were all homemade.



After eating at seven taco trucks and one ice cream place, we spent a grand total of $25. Satchel insisted on a $5 order of tamales at La Guadalupana, otherwise I never would have broken my second $20 bill.

We were both full, but not dying--though I didn't eat again until Sunday. When I emerged from my room Sunday morning, Satchel said, "I want more tacos."

Of course by then, I'd had numerous people mention trucks we never found, so I seriously considered it...for a minute. They'll have to wait for the update or part 2. I definitely think it was one of my funnest assignments ever. I'm so glad Satchel was with me.

Donuts! (Say it like Homer Simpson)

I came in from my run this morning to find both Satchel and Jiro dressed and ready for breakfast. I usually come in around 7am with just enough time to make lunches before whisking them off to school. Since today is the day before the St. Jude half, we did a two mile "shake out" run rather than our usual four. So it was 6:30am instead of 7am. I looked at Jiro and said, "Wanna go get donuts?"

"YES!" he said as he zipped up his jacket. He loves donuts and usually asks me to get them at least once a week. It's been awhile since he's even asked, so this was a big treat for him.

I turned to Satchel, and he said, "I don't want to do anything Jiro wants to do."

"Okay..." I said. "Want me to just bring you something back?"

"Yes," he grumpily responded.

"Are you guys fighting?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"Okay. Fine. What do you want?" I asked.

"WHAT I ALWAYS GET," he huffed. He knows I don't know what he always gets. Warren and I have an ongoing tiff because I never get his order right. I even have a note in my phone that tells me what his order is. The problem is his use of technical names for donuts rather than common names. Coupled with my inability to remember what he is actually talking about when he says chocolate chocolate cake means his to go order is often wrong.)

"A chocolate glazed?" I asked Satchel.

"YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE!!"

"Coconut?"

"WHAT I GOT LAST TIME!" he moaned in utter dispair.

Since I actually just wrote up our last visit to Memphis Donuts I was able to recall that he got a bacon and egg biscuit. By now, he had buried himself under a blanket on the couch, utterly devastated by his mother's lack of concern for his well-being and her inattention to detail. "A biscuit?" I said, hopefully.

"YES!" he said almost in a pleasant sounding whine.

Throughout this dramatic exchange Warren was going back and forth as to whether he wanted a donut, whether I'd be back before he left, and whether I'd actually get the right one. "The chocolate cake donut with the chocolate icing on it," he called after me as Jiro and I started for the door. "Did you hear me?" he called again.

"Yes, chocolate cake with chocolate icing," I replied. I really do actually know what he means now.

And for those of you still reading, yes, I was deeply regretting having offered to do something nice for my family at 6:30am.

Jiro and I piled in the car and headed to Donald's. I was still in my running clothes, which is always the most awesome thing to wear at the donut shop, and was not thrilled to see that there was a long line ahead of us. But, we soldiered on.

Once inside, it was clear that something disastrous had happened. It was smoky and greasy smelling. However, there were still two people drinking coffee and reading the paper, and a whole line of people ordering donuts. Suddenly I was happy not to be dressed for the day because it was clear that the most unpleasant smell in the air was going to stick.

While we were in line, I got the following text from Satchel (in all caps): "I WANT A BISCUIT AND A GLAZED DOUGHNUT."

I showed Jiro, we giggled, and then I replied, "Ok, Sweetie."

We placed our order--a biscuit, a glazed, a chocolate chocolate cake, a glazed twisty and a dozen donut holes. (I did not order anything for myself.) The lady totally gave me an iced chocolate cake instead of a chocolate chocolate, but I caught it. "OH, a DOUBLE chocolate," she said as though I did not live with someone who made donuts for a living in the 80s.

I paid, handed Jiro the bags and headed out the door. By the time we got to the car, Jiro had a fistful of glazed twisty, sprinkles of glaze all over his school uniform, and the biggest grin you ever saw.

Back at home, everyone was pleased with their donuts. However, there was a "What's that smell?" conversation throughout the duration of donut eating. I suggested it might be the smell from the donut shop, but Warren said it smelled more poop like. "Or like maybe something dead," he added. Then Satchel offered that it might be me since I hadn't showered yet.

Warren sniffed the compost and then walked around looking behind the house plants. Finally, he said, "It's the trash can." He made fish last night and the wrappers were still in the can.

"Ew!!!" everyone said as you-know-who took out the trash.

TGIF

Vermonster

On Friday the boys were invited to a birthday party at Ben & Jerry's. I figured they'd just have ice cream for dinner, which is kind of becoming a usual thing for us, and then head to basketball practice to work off the sugar high. That's pretty much what happened, but the ice cream part was extra fun.

Ever heard of the Vermonster? I actually first caught wind of it on Food Network, but had never seen one in person. It's a 21 scoop sundae served in a bucket. Theo, the birthday boy, and his mom often share a mini-Vermonster (4 scoops), so he wanted the real deal when he turned 10.



The Ben & Jerry's peeps had a table all set up for the kids. Everyone sat down and then they called Theo over and handed him an empty Vermonster bucket. They told him he had to catch the 21 scoops of ice cream! Then they started tossing.



He was a little embarrassed at first, but soon took on a little swagger. He dropped a few, but no one seemed to care. Then, the best part was that everyone at the party (under 10) got a chance to catch a scoop. How awesome is that?





Turns out we didn't actually eat any of the tossed scoops, so it was a little wasteful, but the kids loved it. Once everyone had a turn, they brought out the pre-made Vermonsters for them to tear into.




Once everyone had their fill, they commenced playing foosball and checkers. (I love the little dance Jiro & Santi did everytime they scored.)




It was really fun, and not just because the parents got their own Vermonster to split. (Next time I want to catch a scoop!) Jiro kindly offered to help us polish off the last of ours.



Dude!

(Food) Truckin'

When Rock-n-Romp was over and we started checking Facebook it became clear that we had seriously missed out on some yummy food truck action. Although all four of the trucks competing in Food Network's Great Food Truck Race were downtown within a few blocks of each other, we were just too tired to go downtown. Instead, we opted to gorge on sushi at Sekisui, get a good night's sleep, and look for the trucks in the morning.

When we woke up Sunday morning it was rainy and nasty. That didn't stop us from heading to Overton Square for lunch when we heard that Hodge Podge and Korilla were set up. The monkeys and I watched the first season of the Great Food Truck Race so they were 100% on board with an afternoon of chasing down food trucks. They also thought that they might get on TV, which always thrills them.



(Satchel was purposely closing his eyes!)

After seeing pictures of shrimp tacos on Saturday, I was more than a little disappointed to see a breakfasty menu.



We decided to split a grilled cheese and fries and then head out in search of the other trucks. We placed our order fairly quickly, but the wait was a bit crazy. The monkeys were having a REALLY hard time quietly standing in line.

I left the boys with Warren and walked over to Korilla to get a jump on what I thought might be another long wait. Much to my delight, it was super quick and I had some kimchi tacos and a kimchi quesadilla in no time.



I thought there was chicken with the kimchi, but it ended up being a tofu scramble.



Food in hand, I headed back over to where the boys were huddled under a tarp waiting for the grilled cheese. By now, Warren was pretty much over the whole food truck experience. As we tried to eat the kimchi tacos they basically fell apart. It was sad. As we commiserated with our fellow food truck enthusiasts we learned that sometime on Saturday night the trucks had been mandated to serve no meat. D'oh!

When it finally arrived, the grilled cheese with fried egg was actually pretty good, but near impossible to eat with a plastic fork.



Knowing we wouldn't get any ceviche at the Lime Truck or one of the amazing grilled cheese & pork sandwiches at Roxy, we decided we'd had enough. We had some YoLo for dessert and then went home.

However, by 7pm it was sunny and Roxy was in Cooper Young and the Lime Truck was at the Shell. Satchel and I decided to check them out after all. Roxy was first.



We were a little short on cash after the morning rounds--food truck fare is not cheap! At least not when competing on national TV!--so we had to make the difficult decision between the three options.



I knew carmelized onions would be a hard sell for Satchel so we went with the spinach and leek sandwich and an order of spicy fries. (They were out of their potato salad so we ended up with an extra helping of fries.) The "spicy" part of the fries was sriracha. Nothing fancy but very yummy. And that sandwich? YUM. Leeks may be Satchel's new favorite food. The food came out super fast, which was awesome.



We got in the car with our treats and headed to the Shell where we easily spotted the Lime Truck. Their menu sounded the best and I wanted to try everything but we were down to $9.



We decided on the spinach artichoke dip and strawberry limeade. Satchel LOVES artichokes.



The artichokes were on top of homemade chips. Satchel said they smelled like they were cooked in peanut butter oil.



After all of our running around, I was thrilled to have a cool drink. They had a cooler set up where you could get free refills, which I gladly would have taken advantage of, but we had to head home.



I'm so happy that the food trucks came to Memphis. I hope that they inspired some local restaurants and I can't wait to watch the show to see which of our beloved local chefs and foodies make cameos.

Cupcake Camp

After a visit to the Woodland Discovery Playground this morning, the monkeys and I headed over to Cupcake Camp at the Agricenter. I was asked to judge, and how do you say no to free cupcakes?

The event is simple--enter cupcakes into the various contests, or pay $3 to come in and eat as many cupcakes as you want. All proceeds benefitted the Women of Style, Spirit & Success. These cupcake camps take place all over the country. This was the first year to have one in Memphis, and I can definitely see it becoming a wildly popular event.

The crowd today was pretty good. I'd guess 300-500?



The judging took place in a separate room. There were several categories including Best Memphis Theme:



and Most Unique Ingredient:



The categories I picked were Most Healthy (natch) and Kids (double natch). We had several things to consider while tasting.



Among the healthy contenders was a sad looking, but tasty carrot cake muffin, an inedible carob concoction, a white cupcake with chocolate pudding icing and a petite blueberry muffin/cupcake. The blueberry was my favorite, although I don't know if any of them were technically healthy.



The monkeys were hanging off to the side while I judged, but Jiro could only take watching for so long. He soon came over and appointed himself as my helper, which was just fine with me. He took our judging very seriously and declared the cookie dough cookie monster cupcake the hands down winner in the kids category.



Since our two categories had the least amount of entries, we got to sample some of the other cupcakes that were causing a buzz among the judges.

Behold the BBQ cupcake:



Yep that's pulled pork with a maple icing on top of a corn muffin. Amazingly, it was really, really good.

I had high hopes for the taco cupcake, replete with lettuce, sour cream, salsa, and cheese, but the corn/meat muffin was really dry.



All in all, it was a really fun way to spend a couple of hours. I enjoyed chatting with my fellow judges and I was thrilled to have Jiro by my side.

Southern Hot Wing Festival

Today I was a judge at the Southern Hot Wing Festival, along with my friend, Mary. Neither of us had ever been to the festival, and judging was the perfect introduction since it allowed us to mingle with the teams, sample lots of wings, and drink free beer.

Before judging, we checked out the new MCA gift shop and gallery downtown, and then stopped for hot coffee at Bluff City and completely burned the insides of our mouths, which was super smart. We also found a hidden jungle downtown.




Had we known we were actually late for the judging check in, we probably wouldn't have dallied so much. In my mind, we were two of four judges who would sit at the bar at Ernestine & Hazel's and have a steady stream of wings brought to us. Nope. We were two of fifty? A hundred? judges. Even though we were technically 45 minutes late, we arrived just as they were telling everyone what to do.



There were a lot of rules, and we considered bolting, but fellow judge, Ben Smith, assured us we were in for some fun. He also informed us that being a roving judge was the way to go. Turns out we each had three different tents to visit and we were told to spend 10 minutes at each one. (But no more than 15!) We got our assignments and off we went.





My first visit with the Cargill team was a nice warm up. Their wings were sriracha and lime juice marinated, which was right up my alley. And they hooked me up with a nice big beer.



Once I was done, I went to watch Mary in action. As she sampled the wings, I chatted with the team she was judging and told them that she was actually a vegetarian.

My second team, the Hot Wing Harem, was by far the most fun. You can see why:



An all female team with Indian spiced wings? Heck yeah! When it was my turn to sample, the head chef told me all about how she makes wings for parties and people love them so much, she decided to form a team.



Her husband is Indian, so that's why she stared incorporating Indian spices. The wings were really, really good.



The hardest part of judging was by far having to eat chicken wings while chatting. And for me, the second hardest part was getting all of the chickeny bits out of my teeth so I didn't look like an a-hole.

By the time we got to Mary's second team, Warren and Satchel had arrived. I went to meet them at the gate and we soon ran into Jiro and his buddies, who had clearly been in contact with a face painter and shwag giver outer.



Now that I had the entire Team Oster crew and 3/4 of Team Provencio, judging became even more difficult. Luckily, I only had one tent to go. The Red Wings were a BBQ team turned wing team that modeled their free range birds after Central BBQ. I soon learned that the guys were also affiliated with the Burn My Mouth blog, and we had chatted by email in the past. They claimed to be huge Dining with Monkeys fans, so we had a nice little visit.



The wings were yum, and I wanted to pocket some of their secret rub.



Once I was officially done judging, we started circling around to taste for fun. Unlike BBQ fest, you don't actually have to know anyone on the teams to get a sample. The most happening tent was the Wing Tang Clan, so we went to see what the fuss was about. Satchel loved their super hot wings, even though he needed an entire bottle of water per wing.



Sadly due to the cold, the crowds, and the children begging to go to the Peanut Shoppe, we just couldn't sample all of the wings that we wanted to. There were tons of fun looking tents and all varieties of wings. I really wanted a bite of the Angry Birds.



I'm already hoping they ask me back to judge next year. I'll better prep the monkeys on how everything is going to go down, and probably skip the pre-wing coffee.