Volume 94 Issue 6 — The Lunchies

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

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LUNCHIES

MEDITERRANEAN FOOD THAT ‘BELONGS TO EVERYBODY’

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By GILLIAN MCGOLDRICK The Temple News

talian pizza, Mexican burritos and Chinese egg rolls are staples on any American college campus. But Omar Alsaadi and Mike Kabbani have set out to “Americanize” Mediterranean cuisine, starting on Main Campus.

Alsaadi and Kabbani are the owners of Pita Chip, a new restaurant on Broad Street near Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

They chose this location as soon as it opened, as Temple has always been where they wanted to begin this business.

“If you aren’t going to make it on a college campus, forget it,” Alsaadi said. “You’re not going to make it anywhere.”

Pita Chip’s menu includes different Middle-Eastern dishes in a “build your own” model—choose an entrée, a protein or veggie and the toppings. These dishes include chicken and beef shawarma, which is a popular method of cooking the meats on a vertical stack for full flavor. Both

PITA | PAGE L3

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BRIANNA SPAUSE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

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BEAUTY IN THE CHAOS Whether it’s cooked on a fryer or with a grill, or comes in a bag or platter, the food options at Temple seem to satisfy the varied palates of college students. For some, it’s time to try something you’ve never had before, like the Japanese street snack takoyaki from the new food truck Tabeteki or the build-your-own Mediterranean meals at the new restaurant Pita Chip.

Many of the diverse options come from trucks set up all over Main Campus which helps keep food accessible for students going to and from classes. But a bill that was recently passed by City Council, signed by Mayor Michael Nutter, which The Temple News reported on earlier this year, will implement a food vending district for the

spring semester that will relocate all of Temple’s food trucks to Montgomery Avenue and Norris and 12th streets.

While the supposed positives with this are more organization with trucks and safety, there is no doubt students would miss out on different, and often cheaper, options if their paths don’t cross with the new proposed vending district.

So for now, let’s just appreciate what we have.

Because there’s nothing wrong with a little chaos during lunchtime.

-Albert Hong

Food trucks | Honey

JOSHUA DICKER TTN

Young Gu, one of the chefs at Honey, fires up the grill. Honey offers a number of burger options, like the Pollo Burger which features marinated chicken katsu or the K&B Burger which features a marinated patty with kimchi, fermented spicy cabbage that is often referred to as the national side dish of Korea.

BEHIND THE GRILL KOREAN BBQ MARINADE

DONNA FANELLE TTN

kimchi SAEUJEOT (SHRIMP FISH SAUCE)

GINGER

SUGAR

ONION SALT GARLIC WATER

GOCHUGARU (RED CHILI FLAKES) FISH SAUCE

SHALLOTS CARROT

CABBAGE

Honey’s burger patties are marinated in a special sauce often used for Korean BBQ, which gives it a sweet taste.

RADISH

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

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PITA

KHANYA BRANN TTN

El Guaco Loco’s menu features various Mexican food like tacos, nachos and tacos mixtos, which are popular among customers.

Mexican ‘made from scratch’ El Guaco Loco’s owners also own a restaurant in the city.

By ASH CALDWELL The Temple News Brothers Renaldo De Luna and Rafael De Luna III, co-owners of El Guaco Loco, always had a dream of owning a food truck. When the opportunity arose to purchase one four years ago, they did just that.

Rafael, who used to be an employee at Temple, saw a white, empty truck was for sale and jumped on the opportunity. The truck is parked on Montgomery Avenue between Broad and 13th streets.

Renaldo said even though they’ve had the truck for four years, it has only been in business since April of this year because they opened their restaurant, Guacamole Mex-Grill, near the University of the Sciences on Woodland Avenue near 46th Street last year.

“After we got settled in West Philly, my brother and I basically decided to retrofit and pay more attention to the food truck,” Renaldo said. “We wanted to focus more on the truck because that was always our goal. We wanted to be more mobile.”

Renaldo said the name for the truck, El Guaco Loco, was inspired by their restaurant. The logo, a luchador wrestling mask, was inspired by a love of Mexican wrestling.

El Guaco Loco serves a mixture of traditional Mexican dishes like tacos, burritos and guisado, a stew. The truck’s mole sauce is “made from scratch with over 30 ingredients,” Renaldo said.

The De Luna family has been in the mole-making business for over 60 years.

“Right now, for lunch, we have three guisados—chicken and mole, pork and green salsa, and beef and red salsa, which is chili guajillo,” he said. “With those meats, you can put it in anything. You can put it in your burritos, your tacos, your quesadilla and your nachos.”

Renaldo said most of the food is made from scratch at their restaurant, then brought to and prepared in the truck.

Along with those items, El Guaco Loco’s breakfast items include burritos, tacos and quesadillas with egg, bacon and potatoes— all served with the mole. Renaldo said the chicken and mole has sold the best since its opening, and they want to provide fresh corn and flour tortillas.

The truck is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but the brothers want to eventually be more readily available to students with later classes.

“We have hopes of staying open later to cater to the after-school demographic of Temple,” Renaldo said.

“You can go to any other restaurant,” he added. “You can get the burrito, the taco, the quesadilla and other things from a restaurant.

But keep in mind that everything is made from scratch at our truck. It’s about freshness.”

Alsaadi and Kabbani are familiar with these dishes since they immigrated from Syria.

“It’s authentic with American twist—you don’t see all of these toppings when you go to a shawarma place or falafel place back home in Syria,” said Anas Kabbani, son of Mike Kabbani and manager of Pita Chip, who plans to transfer to Temple next year from Bucks County Community College. “It’s literally, you get a meat, a sauce and a pickle. That’s it, that’s literally all they put on it.”

The store has been open since late July, and has already established regular customers and people who recognize the authenticity of their Mediterranean meals.

“People who have tried it like it, they keep coming back,” Anas Kabbani said.

“We have people bringing their families who are originally from the Middle East, like we had a family from New Jersey come yesterday, they drove 45 minutes because this is the closest thing to authentic that they could find,” he added.

Many vegetarians and vegans have also been able to find tasty meals at Pita Chip, Anas Kabbani said. Some of their popular vegetarian food options are the falafel and the grilled veggies.

“There’s not much for them [at Temple] unless they make their food themselves,” he said. “So we have vegetarians and vegans—I have some

that come in daily because it’s the only thing they can eat they don’t have to make.”

Pita Chip is also not the families’ first collaborative business venture.

They co-own two 7-Elevens and two gas stations in Bucks County.

Shanna Moser, a second year graduate student in Temple’s business sports program, goes to Pita Chip a couple times a week with her coworkers from the athletic department.

“It’s fresh food, it’s a lot healthier than a lot of the other options around here,” Moser said. “And I’m very picky; I get the same thing every time.

So I think that by having that option that I can just get hummus, I was definitely like, ‘Yes, sign me up!’”

Alsaadi said this restaurant is a stepping stone for opening more of these restaurants on other college campuses in Philadelphia, if it is successful on Temple’s campus.

“To be honest, my goal eventually ... [is] that this food become as mainstream in the American society as pizza, Chinese food or Mexican food,” Alsaadi said.

“It’s like hummus—when I came, nobody knew what hummus is but now you walk in every supermarket and you see it in all the shelves and it’s advertised on TV and that still hasn’t reached really main stream, but still people ask what that is,” he added.

“Sometimes people ask me, ‘Is this a Middle Eastern food, an Israeli food?’ I always like to say, ‘It’s our food. It belongs to everybody.’” * gillian.mcgoldrick@temple.edu

BRIANNA SPAUSE TTN

* ashley.caldwell@temple.edu

Co-owner, Omar Alsaadi, carves layers of chicken shawarma for the lunch rush.

A wave of new lunchtime possibilities on campus Tabeteki, which specializes in Japanese food, is a new truck from the owner of Vegan Tree.

By ALBERT HONG Lifestyle Editor Whether it’s vegan Philly cheesesteaks, traditional hot pots and now Japanese cuisine, Jeff Ji is all about doing things differently with lunch trucks on Temple’s Main Campus—both for himself and others.

“When I want to start a business, I don’t want to make similar food with other trucks,” said Ji, the owner of Tabeteki, a new Japanese food truck on 13th Street. “I don’t want to take others’ business, so I want to make some food here that Temple doesn’t have.”

Tabeteki opened last semester as the only truck on campus that serves exclusively Japanese items, like Japanese curry and udon noodles. Even though Ji is Chinese, he’s had experience working at a Japanese restaurant during his five years in Philadelphia.

“Some trucks, maybe they have sushi or something, but I don’t serve sushi—I serve takoyaki, tempura, tonkatsu,” Ji said.

As students may be unfamiliar with some items on the menu, Ji makes sure to explain less common dishes to students. The takoyaki, for example, is a ball-shaped Japanese street snack made from a batter, cooked in a special pan, filled with minced octopus and brushed with takoyaki sauce.

The truck’s most popular food items vary depending on what students are feeling up to at the moment.

“Most people, if they want a snack, they pick the takoyaki,” Ji said. “If they want a full meal, they will pick the tonkatsu rice or the chicken rice. Sometimes they will buy both because they think one meal is not enough.”

Many will notice Tabeteki for its vivid front painting, which is based off Katsushika Hokusai’s acclaimed 19th-century work “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” It was spray-paint-

MARGO REED TTN

Takoyaki (top) is a popular Japanese street snack made from a batter and filled with minced octopus.

Jeff Ji (bottom), owner of the Tabeteki and Vegan Tree food trucks, serves lunch to a student.

ed on last semester by one of Ji’s close friends, Jerry Cai, who graduated from a top university in China and now attends a local art school.

While the process took a week, Ji is happy about the final result and feels it gives off the traditional Japanese feeling he wanted.

In addition to running Tabeteki, Ji also owns Vegan Tree, the truck right next to Tabeteki, which serves vegan burgers and sandwiches as well as traditional East Asian dishes like the hot pot, which involves a hot broth that cooks various ingredients. With these two responsibilities, Ji enlisted the help of two friends, Jaydan Wong and Junchen Dragon, to help run the trucks.

“We just help each other, we don’t have actual positions,” Ji said.

Ji said he chose Temple for the location of both his trucks because “Temple had a spot for us.”

Now with a couple of years under his belt, Ji hopes to eventually open a restaurant in the city. Although he isn’t sure about what it’s going to serve yet, he said a restaurant would give him more business during the idle summer breaks where students are primarily off-campus.

For now, Ji is looking to increase exposure and better communication between himself and students, one outlet being through WeChat, a free messaging and calling app. With the ID of “spicypot,” students can contact Tabeteki about what food is available and what items have run out for the day.

“They can add me as a friend and tell me like what kind of food they want and what time they want to come for pickup,” Ji said.

He also plans on expanding the menu soon with traditional bento boxes containing two or three sides and a soup.

“I do unique food … unique ones are like my self-point,” he added. * albert.hong@temple.edu ( 215.204.7416

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

STA F F FAVO R I T E S Albert Hong

Sean Brown

Lifestyle Editor

Multimedia Editor

Cha Cha Donkatsu

Burger Tank TEXAS COWBOY MELT

Jenny Kerrigan

Emily Rolen

wingo taco korean style tacos

Tabeteki Curry Tonkatsu Rice

Photo Editor

EJ Smith

Editor-in-Chief

Joe Brandt

Managing Editor

Chief Copy Editor

FAMOUS NY GYRO Chicken over Rice

Foot Long Truck Sausage Parm Sandwich

Paige Gross

Steve Bohnel

Opinion Editor

News Editor

Foot Long Truck Chicken Parm Sandwich

FAMOUS NY GYRO Lamb over rice

Victoria Mier

Donna fanelle

A&E Editor

Design Editor

The Creperie PUMPKIN SPICE

tropical smoothie cafe

TOP: Michael Guise, Sports Editor, Burger Tank, Club Burger

artisan tacos

JENNY KERRIGAN TTN