Best New Food Trucks 2012

The best new meals on wheels.

By Seattle Mag October 31, 2012

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This article originally appeared in the November 2012 issue of Seattle magazine.

Crisp Creperie
Roving; crispseattle.com
Just how good can a crêpe be, you ask? Ham and cheese, Nutella and banana: Aren’t they all sort of the same? They’re not, and Crisp Creperie’s delicious, inventive crêpes are proof. Take the roasted turkey version with jalapeño-artichoke spread, roasted peppers and spinach ($10). It’s savory and creamy with a kick, and it’s a knockout. One crêpe plays sweet apples and oozing Brie cheese off prosciutto ($12); another layers bananas on top of ricotta cheese, with maple syrup and cinnamon, too ($8). The menu changes often, but trust owners Jonathan Amato and Evan Mayer, both of whom cooked at restaurants in other states before moving here: Their clever combos taste great.

Garden Sushi
Ballard, corner of 15th Avenue NW and 70th Street; 206.495.3099; gardensushiseattle.com
You’re not going to believe this, but you should absolutely be eating the fresh, well-made sushi from this new Ballard truck. Yes, sushi from a truck. Parked next to a gas station. With the giant word “sushi” emblazoned across a banner. Tucked next door to the mini-mart of the Shell gas station at 15th Avenue NW and 70th Street, owner and sushi chef Tsering Lama’s tent-fronted truck is most civilized. It’s decked out with flower pots on two metal tables, with gentle music playing softly in the background. Inari (sweet tofu wrapped around warm, lightly seasoned rice) is a pleasure ($2 for two pieces), but so is the hamachi (yellowtail tuna): fresh, clean, meltingly tender on the tongue ($3.50 for two pieces). We wish our spicy scallop roll ($4.50) had had a bit more filling, but the Dragon Roll more than made up for it: tempura shrimp and crab salad were tucked inside, with grilled eel on top ($8.50). For the prices, you can’t beat the quality. We’ll be back, often.

Off the Rez
Roving; offthereztruck.com
One of the most delicious and surprising things we tasted as we worked our way through a dozen new food trucks this summer was the hot fry bread drenched in lemon curd ($2.50) at Mark McConnell and Cecilia Rikard’s Native American taco truck, helmed by chef Donovan MacInnis, a former sous chef at Portalis. Like a doughnut—soft, pillowy, a little crunchy at the edges—but not as sweet, the bread comes hot out of the fryer, spread with your choice of Nutella or house-made jam, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, drizzled with honey, or in a pool of that tart, delicious, house-made lemon curd. There are savory fry-bread “tacos” (which are more like open-faced fry-bread sandwiches) on the menu, too, but I found the pulled pork too sweet and the veggie—with cooked beans, iceberg lettuce, scant cilantro and shredded cheddar—underwhelming. But those sweet options? Absolutely divine.

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