Dine & Dash: Food truck Friday 🍽
I find three trucks lined up at an office park off Platte Avenue: Bangkok Bites, Teppanyaki Ty's and Maru's Mexican Food
Bangkok Bites
On a recent Friday I find three food trucks lined up on Wooten Road, just off Platte Avenue toward Town Center Drive. The first is Bangkok Bites, which just launched in late August of this year.
Owner/Chef Pannatorn Bonifas says she was prior serving as a popup tent at the Black Forest Farmers Market, and this is her first foray into the food-service business. She grew up in Chiang Mai and attended culinary school in Thailand before moving to the States. She tells me her cooking style is how she now cooks at home for her family.
She’s keeping her menu small and flexible for now, as she’s currently only serving three days a week during lunch (early to mid afternoon) here. What that looks like this day: Thai fried rice, Panang curry or drunken noodles with chicken or Pad Kra-prao with ground pork. There’s also side veggie spring rolls available, but Thai-style fried chicken is already sold out by the time I arrive.
I get the drunken noodles, which are atypical in that they’re thin, chow mein-like, wheat noodles (called yellow noodles on the menu) versus the standard, wide rice noodles you’re used to seeing in restaurants. They come with an array of fresh vegetables, cooked somewhat al dente: broccoli, baby corn, carrots, bell peppers and onions, with wilted basil leaves clinging to thin, chewy chicken hunks.
I order mine medium-hot, which proves ideally mid-level spicy with ample heat but nothing that unbalances flavors or sends me into a sweat. Noodles are somewhat drier than in a saucy stir fry, but moist enough not to stick to each other. The overall taste is a perfectly pleasant and simple mix of basil-laced wok hay and the simple chicken-vegetable natural flavors. An included veggie roll crunches into a cabbage-carrot-spinach-vermicelli core, accented by a thin, housemade sweet chile sauce dip. (Bless you for not serving me lazy Mae Ploy.)
Teppanyaki Ty’s
The Ty in Teppanyaki Ty’s is Chef/Owner Tyler Roe, who greets me alongside his son, who works the flattop preparing my meal as I chat his dad up.
I learn they hit the road almost a year ago, Tyler having come out of hotel work in Denver most recently, as well as cooking for a stint at Chile Colorado downtown. He counts 16 years total in the industry, and that’s after cooking in home kitchens as a kid with his aunts. He says he was ready for his own thing, and has other concepts in mind for brick-and-mortar in the future.
Why teppanyaki, I ask. The answer is two-part: 1) another childhood memory, of a stall at the flea market named Peggy’s Pit Stop, that served yakitori (skewered chicken over rice in that case). His dad is a musician who used to play at the market, bringing Tyler along; that’s what he ate while there. 2) He likens teppanyaki to hibachi, minus the show, and says he’d often at eat places in Denver which inspired him to riff on the Japanese style with his own take. “I wanted that vibe,” he says.
He also wanted the beloved yum yum sauce that comes with the genre: the creamy, kewpie mayo-based dipping sauce created in America by hibachi establishments, quickly becoming a fusion sensation between Japanese and domestic flavors. “Everyone loves it,” says Roe, noting it particularly makes chicken taste great. He also serves a side ramekin of teriyaki sauce for an added pop of sweet umami if you desire.
The small menu, all cooked on the flat top, only offers fried rice (as he doesn’t personally care for steamed), but Roe offers your choice of vegetables: “what you want versus me forcing you to eat what you don’t — and I don’t do frozen peas and carrots.”
I ask for a chef’s choice, and he makes me the chicken teppanyaki with a full vegetable mix of bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, carrots and zucchini. This is the signature dish he launched the truck around, he says, though guests can also choose proteins of steak, shrimp, spam or just vegetables.
I dig in, and there’s nothing not to like. The veggies are snappy and fresh, the chicken tender and lightly seasoned with a mild, zesty saltiness and the rice browned a little and ready to receive the sauces. I go easy on the teriyaki and heavy on the yum yum, evenly mixing it around so all bites benefit from the creaminess and lightly tart acidity. It’s just a damn good stir fry, well prepared and achieving what it aims to be.
Maru’s Mexican Food
I’m told Maru’s has been around for two years, and parks Mondays through Fridays, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., on Wooten Road, just off Platte Avenue toward Town Center Drive.
A couple of items catch my eye as uncommon locally: garnachas and tlayudas.
The first (which I don’t get) are similar to tostadas in that they’re open-faced on a crisp tortilla, but the toppings tend to differ as well as the size sometimes. The second (which I do order) can be compared to an oversized quesadilla, and I later read it’s sometimes referred to as a “Mexican pizza.”
Tlayudas hail from Oaxacan cuisine and also feature a crispy tortilla, and are often served open-face, too. But at Maru’s, likely because it needs to fit in a standard to-go box, they serve it folded over. You choose asada, barbacoa or pastor (of which I ask for a mix of the latter two) and that joins chorizo, refried beans and Oaxaca cheese as filling.
Before I even open my foam box, I can feel the weight of the beast inside. Two pizza slice-sized tortilla folds are each more than a half inch thick, generous with the proteins. In my phone I write down “shit-ton of meat for $22” as my first note to future-writing-self.
The tortilla holds a nice, chewy texture that’s at-first slightly crunchy from the grill, bearing a hard corn taco shell flavor. The meats all meld together despite different textures of stringiness and crumbled and there not being a proliferation of cheese (a good thing in this case), and without garnishes they taste mildly chorizo seasoned, a little pot-roasty and a little porky. Overall it’s just heavy and substantial.
Bites really come to life with the addition of the punchy and slightly creamy red and green sauces, which I could have used two more ramekins of each. The verde tastes medium-spicy and more vegetal, making the meaty bites feel a touch lighter. The roja has a slightly more biting spice, delightfully earthier. (With other customers in line, I don’t get a chance to ask about the respective chile peppers utilized.)
Unsurprisingly, the tlayuda easily feeds two people, unless you’re someone who prefers to pack-in a whole bunch of protein all at once.
Other truck offerings if you desire something different: tamales (noted as a house specialty), enchiladas, tacos, sopes, mole and hamburguesas and hotdogs topped with Mexican-ingredient garnishes and mayo-ketchup sauce.