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Mac and cheese... Super Q slider topping?
BBQ off the back of a truck is not quite the same as the sit-down experience.
I should've used some of that Cholula.
I keep wanting to like food trucks. I don't know why — I have no trouble going to traditional storefront restaurants and dining in or taking out. I'd rather eat sitting at a table than standing on a sidewalk or in a parking lot. And while I might marvel at the accomplishment of making complex dishes in a tiny mobile kitchen, I'd much rather marvel at the quality of simple dishes made in a full-sized kitchen.
But then I spotted the Super Q Food Truck in South Park's Gala Foods parking lot (part of Tuesday night Curbside Bites), with its Green Lantern-looking superhero mascot and connection to Kaminski's BBQ, and decided this would be the day I finally try the Super Q Brisket Melt: a relatively simple brisket sandwich topped by three-cheese macaroni. (Turns out this wasn't the day, but I'll get to that.)
Ever seen a superhero brandishing tongs before?
Now, I've been to Kaminski's a number of times. As Poway restaurants go, it's worth a visit, and serves up some pretty decent ribs. They offer a couple of proprietary sauces, and I usually go with the vinegar-based Carolina because I almost never prefer their sweeter tomato-based.
Thing is, I've tried their brisket too, and it didn't perform any miracles. I wasn't sure I wanted to pin all my food-truck BBQ hopes on an underperforming slab of beef, so I started considering macaroni on pulled pork, or macaroni on chicken. Fortunately, Super Q made it easy on me by offering a trio of sliders. I got one of each, every one of them topped by that three-cheese mac, for a total of ten bucks.
So here's where it started to go wrong. The question of sauce never came up during the ordering process. With BBQ, it should. Especially if you don't dig on sweet sauce or, conversely, want your sandwich drowning in it.
Either way, they didn't bring it up and neither did I, so if the Carolina version of Kaminski's sauce was available, I missed out., meaning all my sliders were too sweet for my liking.
Pretty sloppy stuff to eat off a truck. Sliders Trio. Super Q Food Truck.
I try to be fair, and wanted to check the quality of each meat regardless of sauce. On this point they were all pretty successful — for having come off a truck. They were tender and moist, and I enjoyed each variety, particularly the pork.
But that mac and cheese didn't really help matters. Again, it was good on its own, but too mild to provide any flavor to contrast the sauce. And of course, it stayed within the slider bun about as well as the name would suggest. I ate all three sandwiches over a plate and then used a fork to scoop up everything that didn't make it to my mouth.
Ultimately, I could have ordered better, and done something more to spice up my meal. But until somebody serves me delicious ribs off a truck, I'm going to stick to BBQ joints that are too busy smoking meat to worry about painting cartoon characters on a truck.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Mac and cheese... Super Q slider topping?
BBQ off the back of a truck is not quite the same as the sit-down experience.
Mac and cheese... Super Q slider topping?
BBQ off the back of a truck is not quite the same as the sit-down experience.
I should've used some of that Cholula.
I keep wanting to like food trucks. I don't know why — I have no trouble going to traditional storefront restaurants and dining in or taking out. I'd rather eat sitting at a table than standing on a sidewalk or in a parking lot. And while I might marvel at the accomplishment of making complex dishes in a tiny mobile kitchen, I'd much rather marvel at the quality of simple dishes made in a full-sized kitchen.
But then I spotted the Super Q Food Truck in South Park's Gala Foods parking lot (part of Tuesday night Curbside Bites), with its Green Lantern-looking superhero mascot and connection to Kaminski's BBQ, and decided this would be the day I finally try the Super Q Brisket Melt: a relatively simple brisket sandwich topped by three-cheese macaroni. (Turns out this wasn't the day, but I'll get to that.)
Ever seen a superhero brandishing tongs before?
Now, I've been to Kaminski's a number of times. As Poway restaurants go, it's worth a visit, and serves up some pretty decent ribs. They offer a couple of proprietary sauces, and I usually go with the vinegar-based Carolina because I almost never prefer their sweeter tomato-based.
Thing is, I've tried their brisket too, and it didn't perform any miracles. I wasn't sure I wanted to pin all my food-truck BBQ hopes on an underperforming slab of beef, so I started considering macaroni on pulled pork, or macaroni on chicken. Fortunately, Super Q made it easy on me by offering a trio of sliders. I got one of each, every one of them topped by that three-cheese mac, for a total of ten bucks.
So here's where it started to go wrong. The question of sauce never came up during the ordering process. With BBQ, it should. Especially if you don't dig on sweet sauce or, conversely, want your sandwich drowning in it.
Either way, they didn't bring it up and neither did I, so if the Carolina version of Kaminski's sauce was available, I missed out., meaning all my sliders were too sweet for my liking.
Pretty sloppy stuff to eat off a truck. Sliders Trio. Super Q Food Truck.
I try to be fair, and wanted to check the quality of each meat regardless of sauce. On this point they were all pretty successful — for having come off a truck. They were tender and moist, and I enjoyed each variety, particularly the pork.
But that mac and cheese didn't really help matters. Again, it was good on its own, but too mild to provide any flavor to contrast the sauce. And of course, it stayed within the slider bun about as well as the name would suggest. I ate all three sandwiches over a plate and then used a fork to scoop up everything that didn't make it to my mouth.
Ultimately, I could have ordered better, and done something more to spice up my meal. But until somebody serves me delicious ribs off a truck, I'm going to stick to BBQ joints that are too busy smoking meat to worry about painting cartoon characters on a truck.
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