Japanese Food Trucks in Richmond
I’ve been hearing about these mobile trucks that sells Japanese food in Richmond, so on a fairly nice day, my friends and I went on a hunt for these mobile trucks. I say hunt, because it was really quite a journey for us to find them.
First we believed the address listed on urbanspoon, and drove to the middle of a business park parking lot. No luck, the address was totally wrong. Then, we googled Tenku Bakudanyaki (one of the truck’s name), and believed google maps. That led us to the empty parking lot across from Rona on Elmbridge way; the address was totally wrong, again. Not willing to give up, we went to their website, just to double check the address, and that led us to a 3rd address to these trucks. Finally, we decided to try one more time, and 3rd time’s a charm, we found them.
Since there were 3 trucks and each truck really only sold one item, I broke them down into 3 little reviews.
Tenku Bakudanyaki
We started off with Tenku Bakudanyaki, this truck was selling Takoyaki bombs (bakudanyaki). You can get them in different sauce flavors, we got a Wasabi Mayo Bakudanyaki ($5). This giant takoyaki had a more ingredients in it than I expected. It had shrimp, cabbage, whole quail egg, and it was topped with lots of bonito flakes. What was strange was, I don’t remember eating any tako (octopus) from the bakudanyaki. There was also a lot of sweet yaki sauce and wasabi mayo on top, really nice flavors. I’d eat it again but I probably wouldn’t pay 5 dollars for it.
Fumisen!
Fumisen! was the next truck over, and it was selling sushi cones. There were a few specialty cones that they sell, but you can also make your own. We decided to just go with one of the specialties, and got the Spicy Salmon Cone with Soy Crepe ($4.75). The cone had spicy salmon, green onions, and tons of tobiko. The cone was held together by their yellow soy crepe, which I really had no clue what it was. The soy crepe didn’t have any taste to it, but it did make the cone looked prettier.
This was a pretty delicious cone. The spicy salmon was great and it got the right amount of heat from the spicy sauce. Every bite has got a nice contrast in texture from the salmon and the rice and the tobiko. This was a great item to get in the summer, no heavy flavors here. I’d eat this again, however like the bakudanyaki, I didn’t think it was worth $4.75.
Shoryumen
Shoryumen was last truck we visited and it was a ramen noodle truck. We were there when they were in the middle of changing menus for the summer, so we basically made our own bowl ramen noodles with the help of the guy at the counter. We got a Shio Ramen and it included nori (seaweed sheets), cabbage, sprouts, and green onions. We were also asked to pick 3 additional toppings for our ramen, and we picked Chashu (pork), black mushroom and bamboo shoots. All that for $8.75 dollars.
The Shio Ramen was not what I’m usually used to. The soup base was really clear, and it tasted like just how it looks, nothing fancy. The pork were shredded instead of sliced. All of the toppings by the way, were cold. The soup was just lukewarm. I definitely didn’t get the comforting feeling that I’d expect from a bowl of ramen.
There was also nowhere to sit in this truck, there was a bar, but it was for standing only. The guy at the counter was pretty nice. He gave us an extra topping (young bamboo shoots) because we told him we went to all of their previous locations before finally finding them there.
I think the concept of the trailers was interesting, however everything was slightly over priced in my opinion. The one bad thing about these trucks was that they are mobile and they move. The best way to find out where they are currently located is through their website, we found that out the hard way. Overall, I give these 3 food trucks 3/5 stars, for decent food, and it’s street food concepts.
For store hours and location:
www.bakudanyaki.com
5 Comments
-
June 29, 2010 11:26:23 am
Hmm the portions seem pretty small and the prices are high considering there are very few overhead costs (servers, rent, CHAIRS). They would probably make more money at the night market.
-
June 29, 2010 12:04:06 pm
Hmm the prices are definitely higher than I would put up with! hehe the whole point of the concept of food trucks is that they move around silly. I’ve heard what many do in the US is maintain a Twitter page and tweet their current locations.
-
June 29, 2010 1:06:43 pm
wow I didn’t even think about checking their twitter, Jordana. That’s a great idea.
For future visitors, this is their twitter: http://twitter.com/BAKUDANYAKI
check location before you go!
-
June 22, 2012 10:42:28 pm
Thank you for the sensible critique. Me and my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research on this. We got a grab a book from our area library but I think I learned more from this post. I am very glad to see such great information being shared freely out there.
I’ve always wondered what the food was like from these trucks! Thanks for the article.
Actually, the address of the parking lot across from Rona on Elmbridge is correct – that’s where I see them all the time! I guess being mobile, they rotate to a few locations.