Food Truck Quick Bite: BO's Kitchen....getting my bulgogi on

I do so love a food truck, in case you hadn’t noticed over the years. There is such a proliferation of them in the Bay Area you can always come across one. It also helped to have some specific food truck parks you could hit up knowing they’d be there and you could find something to tempt your palate. Here is a bit of different story. There are a fair number of the trucks around and there is even a somewhat handy map you can access to see where and when they will be. But they are spread out and there isn’t just one place they all hang out. Plus many of them are where the office workers are and being in a spot devoid of such things (and you know working hours and short lunch) have not afforded the opportunity to try as many as I normally would.

Many of the ones I have seen around are taco trucks. In fact, the one time I did notice a bunch sort of close to each other was a Friday night after 7pm driving down Guess Road. It think I counted at least 5 spaced along the 2 mile drive. Hitting them all up would be like doing the Southern version of a taco crawl, just in a car and sans the beer because—-driving. Maybe sometime I will give it a shot. For now, when I get in the food truck mood I scan for any festivals or food truck rodeos (which happen super infrequently here) or just random drive-bys to see if I can get my fix.

Such as it was one random day when I found myself way out in the rural parts of Durham heading to a pumpkin patch having a fall festival when I came across BO’s Kitchen, a food truck serving up Korean food in the deepish South. Hmm, pumpkins, falling leaves and bulgogi, sure, why not.

bulgogi plate

Here’s what $10 from a food truck in NC will get you. A price in line with food trucks here and roughly a couple bucks less than SF. Seems about right. They call this marinated rib-eye meat served on a bed of steamed rice with some scrambled egg, kimchi, a couple squirts of what I think was sriracha and for some reason, a couple leaves of lettuce on the bottom of it all.

In the grand scheme of bulgogi, this may not compare to some things I had in SF but considering where I was and it was a food truck, it was decent enough. The meat was tender though I felt it lacked a tad in the seasoning department. The kimchi was pleasantly pungent at least to heighten the flavor of some basic white rice and standard scrambled egg. Though I do think this would have been better served with a fried egg so some yolk could up the richness level. Guessing it is easier to keep already scramble egg around than to fry an egg up every time for every order. When I think about it, I am not sure now what the sauce was. If it had been sriracha there should have been more spice heat to it than I feel I was getting. Might have been their own special sauce yet it lacked the kick I might normally like.

I realize these are all minor quibbles in taste and possible things may be ratcheted down to suit a broader array of tastes considering the customer base. Or maybe I’m just comparing it too much to spicier, homier versions and need to just moderate my own expectations or just go in without any to start with seems to be the way to go. Also, while it seems like a lot of food, it was more rice underneath it all and honestly, I was still a little hungry after finishing it.

Overall this was fine and while I may have been expecting (wanting?) something more exciting, I walked away from it all with an “it was okay” attitude and a small hunger growl still rumbling. Kind of like how I feel about ice cream as a dessert—I mean it is nice and all but afterwards I’m not completely satisfied and need a little more. Maybe that is how I feel about living in the South right now and it is finding its way into my food appreciation, or lack there of. Or maybe I need to get back to what this area is known for to right my fooditude. Yeah, I’ll go with the second one, at least while I’m still living here.