East Side King Paints the Town Yummy!

A week out of SXSW now feels like ancient history, but my delicious food memories remain.  Here, I wanted to shine a light on yet another awesome food truck experience I had at Paul Qui's and Moto Utsunomiya's East Side King, which came highly recommended.  In addition to the high praises sang by Austinites, I was also lucky to sit in on one of Paul's SX panels, further inspiring me to get a bite out of his cooking.

About East Side King:
For those of you not familiar with Chef Paul Qui, who's something of a local celebrity in Austin, the fact that he's also a Top Chef winner alum during season 9 may ring a bell.  Known for his adventurous cooking style, including winning a quickfire by incorporating the hottest ghost chili pepper there is, Chef Paul is always up for mixing things up and keeping it interesting.

While he owns a few upscale restaurants in Austin such as Uchi, Uchiko and Qui, Chef Paul puts just as much emphasis and attention into his street style mobile restaurant, East Side King.  Boasting a unique spin on Asian street food, East Side King's 5 locations deliver a funky Japanese street vibe in Austin's hippest neighborhoods.  Lucky enough to experience his pop-up locale downtown, especially positioned for SXSW, I got to see what the fuss is all about.

Food:
Admiring the many vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options, East Side King is a great choice if you're specific about the way you eat, but still want to enjoy great flavor.  Dan would be in heaven to see all that gluten free menu items, and I'm going to have to take him there next time we're in town.

Brussels Sprouts Salad - This dish came highly recommended, and wasn't a tough sell for me, as I always love to eat Brussels Sprouts.  It helped that most of the week was spent eating really rich foods, so some hearty veggies were certainly in order.  

While I can't say this salad was light, given the fried preparation of the Brussels Sprouts, it was flavorful as hell!  Coated in a sweet/tangy/spicy sauce, each bite gave your tastebuds a run for their money.  A sprinkling of fragrant herbs such as basil, cilantro and mint helped to freshen things up in the midst of all that fried deliciousness, including pieces of a deep fried bun.  When in Austin...

 
Beet Home Fries - I've never had deep fried beets before, but when I saw these babies included virtually in everyone's order, I knew I had to try them.  Happy to see I chose wisely, I enjoyed the beets' crispy exterior, which was fun to dunk into a creamy Kewpie Mayo (a popular Japanese mayo) further seasoned with spicy shichimi.  I've never had beets prepared in this way, which made the experience that much more unique and memorable.  

Service and Cost:
Due to the popularity of this truck, there's a bit of a wait (about 15-20 minutes), but I promise it's worth it.  The ladies who worked the truck were pleasant and totally accommodating, especially when it came to splitting up our payment into thirds.  It was also great that they accepted credit cards in addition to cash.

Lunch for two people, including drinks and a shared app set us back about $24 in total.

3 Mmmms

East Side King - 4 mobile locations and 1 brick-and-mortar location
Austin, TX
eskaustin.com

SXSW Food Highlights – Gourdough’s Doughnuts

Currently at SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, I always look forward to the bodacious food that’s always a big highlight during my visit. In my typical, type A fashion, I pre-planned a few exciting food escapades to disrupt my busy conference agenda.

To no one’s surprise, food trucks took the front seat, as Austin is known for their creative mobile eats, and the Gourdough’s Doughnuts truck made a particularly sweet (and savory) impression on me. 


About Gourdough’s:
Specializing in larger than life, sweet and savory specialty doughnuts, I got the recommendation to visit Gourdough’s from my cousins Vicky and Eric. The vivid description of their recent experience sent me on a rampage to locate their funky little Airstream trailer and experience it first-hand.

Boasting two mobile locations in Downtown Austin, as well as a brick-and-mortar locale in South Austin, Gourdough’s is known for its unapologetically gluttonous menu. With up to 23 varieties of doughnuts (both sweet and savory), it’s hard to settle on just one - but you’re guaranteed to see something that tugs at your tummy strings. For me, it was the Fat Elvis donut that had me jonesin’.


Fat Elvis Donut:
Before I get into the actual taste of this monstrosity, I must mention that each oversized donut is made fresh to order, which doesn’t go unnoticed. The Fat Elvis is a very special doughnut, as it’s part of Gourdough’s secret menu, so cool kids, please advise!

Combining four of my favorite ingredients, such as grilled bananas, peanut butter, honey and bacon, this oversized doughnut was legit. The latter ingredient sealed the deal for me, especially when I saw how generous they were with it. Loving the peanut butter base, it tasted almost mousse-like, and I adored how the slightly tender bananas stuck to it. While the bacon was positioned in a rustic fashion, it fit the bill perfectly and juxtaposed beautifully with the otherwise sweet ingredients.

The actual doughnut didn’t suck either, as the dough was vibrant, airy and surprisingly light.

Service and Cost:
Since Gourdough’s is a food truck, there’s nothing fancy about its service, except that it’s relatively fast and the people are friendly. They’re happy to go over the menu with you, give you their recommendations and build your confidence (and excitement) about their big, fat donuts. Costs are expensive for a dougnut, however a steal when compared to the Cronut.

The aforementioned Fat Elvis rendition set me back a whopping $7. One thing’s for sure – I can’t wait to try more!

3 Mmmms

Gourdough’s – 604 Driskill Street, Austin TX 78701
gourdoughs.com

Hey Cupcake! I Found You!

So I'm excited to report in to you from Austin, Texas right now, as I'm there for the South By Southwest Festival, which has so far proven to be mighty fun.  Besides the fact that I'm super excited to be at the festival, I'm also in total awe of all the food awesomeness going on in this city.  It doesn't come to me as a surprise, as I've been here twice before, but each time it reaffirms the high-quality foodie action that exists here.  I'll be doing a set of posts from  here, so hope you enjoy them, and if you're at the festival too, feel free to hit me up.

Although just at the start of my culinary adventures here, they've been pretty successful so far, as I was thrilled to discover an entire food truck lot of different treasures on South Congress Street.  One of those trucks caught my eye right away, simply because it was an old school aluminum looking blimp with a huge cupcake on top.  It was just plain cool, and as you can see from this pic above, it's called Hey Cupcake!  A pretty famous cupcake micro truck chain in Austin, Hey Cupcake! is well known in hard-core food circles, even outside of Austin.  I find their story inspirational, as it's a true entrepreneurial venture, summed up well in this video:

Double Dose Cupcake - After not much hesitation, I chose this double chocolate cupcake, with a rich chocolate cake base and a chocolate buttercream frosting.  Simple stuff, you may be thinking, and it looked that way too, but once I took a bite it totally transformed me.  This was something special, and a perfect example of why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.  

The cake was moist as can be and made of good quality dark chocolate, which was evident.  Even though it was sweet, it wasn't overly so, which was a good thing, as the frosting made up for that.  Despite it being rich and ultra luxurious, the frosting (with chocolate sprinkles on top) was light and airy.  It didn't leave me with that heavy feeling in my tummy that I sometimes get after eating extremely rich foods.  All around great stuff, and makes me super curious to try their other flavors such as the 24 Carrot, Sweetberry, John Lemon, and more.  Well...I just might have to.

Service and Cost:
I loved the friendly, casual nature of the staff here, as the person behind the counter was welcoming and conversational.  It may be that signature Southern Hospitality but I couldn't help feeling like I was talking to a good friend.  Certainly a nice way to be treated and another reason why I'd like to go back.

Costs are simple, $3 for a delicious bomb of a cupcake. BAM! That's good stuff.

3 Loud Mmmms

Hey Cupcake - 1600 Block of S. Congress, Austin TX 78704
www.heycupcake.com