Food Truck Sliders

I love the travel channel and recently, I saw an episode on dueling food trucks on Food Wars.  I have been hearing, here and there, about this food truck craze in Los Angeles and began looking up some of these trucks and how to find them.  I started to become a little bummed out as I was looking at different food trucks and their twitter or blog updates showing that they are in different locations on different days and how was I going to drive around L.A. finding all of these trucks?!  L.A. traffic is ridiculous and there was no way I’d be able to make a day of food truck hunting.  I was definitely surprised when I did a Google search for “Unique Restaurants Orange County” and found The Burnt Truck!

The Burnt Truck looked really interesting!  A menu of unique sliders, mini “hamburgers” and I thought to myself, “A mobile restaurant that specializes in sliders has to be amazing!!”  So, that’s what I set out to find out on my Food Truck adventure.

I checked out The Burnt Truck’s website and on Tuesdays, they are in Irvine at 11:30am.  I made the drive and got there about 5 minutes early and there was already a small line formed, waiting for the truck to open up.  11:30am seemed to mean that’s when they start putting out napkins and condiments.  The line continued to grow slowly and I was hearing comments from people about why they hadn’t opened at 11:30am.  They finally began taking orders at 11:50am and my first thought was, “If I was one of these people who were on lunch, working in the surrounding buildings, that 20 minutes would really dig into my lunch hour and I would be pretty miffed.” 

I finally got to order (there was one person taking orders for everyone and one handing the orders out with 2 people cooking) and I ordered their slider combo.  Any 2 sliders, a side and a drink.  A side meant a bag of chips, but if you wanted to order their fries or tater tots, it was an extra cost.  And, by the way, it’s another extra charge to pay with a credit/debit card.  I ordered their vegetarian slider which looked really yummy being a tempura mozzarella patty with a tomato jam and basil aioli on a toasted bun.  The second slider I ordered was their Loco Moco, a beef patty with a crispy slice of Spam, beef gravy, a fried quail egg and nori strips.  I picked fries as my side and waited for my name to be called.  All in all, it cost me $8.50 and I paid with cash.

It took 10 minutes for me to get my order.  I was really excited to try this unique specialty and was really hoping it was work a 30 minute wait.  I sat down to eat and got started with the fries.  I don’t know how they cooked them but they were definitely the way I want my fries to be.  Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and lightly salted.  Not a bad start to this tasting.  Next up, the vegetarian slider was heavenly!  The basil aioli with the crispy tempura mozzarella and the tomato jam was such a beautiful combo!  I could have eaten 10 of them!!  Then, the Loco Moco.  Really disappointing.  With everything going on with that slider, I expected to almost be assaulted with bold flavors mixing together in a way that my mind couldn’t imagine would be so wonderful.  It was sadly bland and actually made me wish I had ordered a different slider. 

Both sliders had toasted buns but overall the bun itself was so soft, I never got the satisfactory crunch of a toasted bun.  The toasting itself was lost in the pillowy fluff of itself. 

In the end, my first food truck experience was sadly lacking.  The Burnt Truck definitely had some great ideas for what could have been some really tasty food, but alas, the execution did not live up to the potential.