Food truck festival at the Santa Anita Race Track

Aside from KogiBBQ, I don’t frequent other food trucks very often. If I do see a food truck mentioned on Twitter, it usually doesn’t match the satisfaction with KogiBBQ.

On April 2nd, 2011, I went to the Food Truck Festival at the Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia.

The weather cooperated nicely. The skies were cloudy and there was a mild breeze. We arrived a little after 1:00pm, unsure of what to expect.

Our gaze was greeted by a massive number of people. Walking around the food trucks, the length of lines varied between 20 to 75 people. The Grilled Cheese food truck had a line of probably 100 people, so that’s an exception. To make matters worse, the map only displayed the names and locations of the food trucks. That left the name of each food truck as the sole description to help us choose.

Combined with the line length (popularity) and lack of description on the map, we walked around until we saw a food truck with an moderate line of people waiting. The Tapa Boy truck had a short line, mainly of Filipinos, so I went with that[1. 4/25/2011 — My girlfriend pointed out that this line makes it sound like I have a bias for Filipino food. I simply went with Tapa Boy because of the short line.]. The tapas bowl I ate was pretty delicious. I think there were a couple food trucks with Indian food, and those didn’t appear to be that popular. Amy got something with tofu, and it was tasty.

Sadly, parking and admission wasn’t worth the trek. Perhaps we should’ve went there right before it opened, but we couldn’t do anything about that.

I’d rather go to Twitter to search for food trucks with a large following, search for food truck reviews, or get recommendations from a friend before visiting a food truck.