Serving up Mediterranean influenced food, the Street Meet truck has hit the streets and is feeding hungry diners their take of Mediterranean and Italian comfort food. The truck is headed up by Chef’s Mike Carter and Alessandro Vianello. I’ve had the pleasure of eating Alessandro’s food when he was Head Chef at Prestons so I knew the cooking would be solid and they would be putting out a great selection of items.
The truck’s location has been changed around since they 1st hit the streets, you can now find them at the corner of Burrard and Pender St in front of Joey’s Bentall. There serving up lunch Monday-Friday from 11:30am-3pm(ish) and there open on some Saturdays-I’d advise following them on Twitter for daily updates.
A signature item they have are there Pork Belly Bites with an Italian Agro Dolce Sauce, $7.00. The pork belly was a perfect balance of sweet and sour with a melt in your mouth texture. I gobbled these baby’s up real quick.
This is what I call pig candy. Mixed in with the pork belly-potato chips to my surprise. They added some more great texture to the bites.
The Risotto Balls stuffed with braised pork and topped with a truffle aioli, $5.00. I was waiting to try these bad boys for a while. I have a deep love for risotto and risotto balls are included in that love. These are filled with tender braised pork and the risotto is cooked with tomatoes. The risotto itself was still nice and creamy while the outside was crunchy and drizzled with truffle aioli. Again I’d say these are a must try item and so worth $5!
The Beef and Guinness Pie. This savory pocket pie was filled with tender Guinness beef, pearl onions and other yummy vegetables. The pastry was the traditional pot pie crust, not to greasy and it didn’t break apart when eating the pie with my hands. For $6 it’s a great snack to eat on the go.
Tiramisu Cannoli’s filled with a rich mascarpone cream, $3.00 for 2 mini cannoli’s. These were absolutely amazing. The filling was rich and creamy because they use mascarpone and it was whipped well so there was a great fluffy mouth feel to it. The flavor was just like a tiramisu and went well with the cannoli shell.
So far I’ve been very happy with everything I’ve had from the Street Meet truck and I’d recommend them to anyone looking for something in the comfort food department.
The next item on the menu for me was the Kebab Burger with 1/2 fries and 1/2 salad.
My kebab burger was made from juicy heritage beef and mixed with herbs and spices. The toppings on this bad boy were the typical shawarma toppings-humus, lettuce and tabouleh. The humus was something that I have never had on a burger and was totally delicious. That’s not ketchup on my burger by the way-it’s Sriracha chili sauce, it added a nice zip to the flavorful toppings and kebab meat.
Nook’s version of the prosciutto pizza has the arugula on the bottom and the freshly sliced prosciutto is placed on right before service so for $15 it’s another good value. This pizza definitely is a rich tasting pizza and will fill you up, they have some good chili oil that is great drizzle to help break the richness of the pizza. On both pizza the bottom is charred nicely but still has some bend to it.
I also got some of their fresh salads, they sell them on a /100 gram rate that’s around $3.50 (ish). I went split it up choice wise seeing everything was the same price so the hardest thing was choosing what to get out of the 6 different choices.
The Mediterranean couscous was the other salad I got, it was a brightly flavored salad with the roasted red pepper and roasted onion being a balance to the vinaigrette.
After reading great things about it I had to get an order of Suika’s Sweet Corn Kakiage, this lightly battered sweet corn was like a corn fritter and was enjoyed by the both of us, the individual corn kernels would pop in your mouth when eating them because of the frying. I’d totally order this dish again.
The steak was cooked perfectly to my liking and was juicy and tender, I would have liked to see more lobster in the topping on my steak but it was delicious none the less.
We were served some complementary house made bread and butter, the bread here is delicious, one of the types were served is their famous seaweed bread, both Mary and I loved this, it’s such a nice treat when a restaurant makes delicious in-house bread.
For our first course I chose the sautéed BC Spot Prawns with kale,chilli, lime and romesco sauce for a $9 extra charge. They were succulent and really good!, the romesco sauce added a great smoked note to the plate, the kale was a great touch but the chilli and lime didn’t really come through.
The other second course was a seared Albacore Tuna with a Winter minestrone, Parmesan pistou and crisp basil. Melt in your mouth tender tuna and a hearty Winter minestrone with orzo pasta was a great accompaniment to the tuna, there was also a basil pesto on the plate that rounded out the plate and reminded me of an Italian tuna dish.
The main course or third course in this menu they are offering a lake Babine Salmon with a squash puree and almond tapenade. The salmon was nice and pink inside, the flavor was nice and rich and was the star of the plate that is for sure. Both of us enjoyed this a lot.
Mary wanted to try the beef option on the menu, for $12 extra they had a Roasted Beef Tenderloin with a walnut polenta, tarragon butter and confit of Portobello mushroom, there was also candied dates on the plate. It was a great beef dish and I ended up cleaning the plate clean, the walnut polenta accented the beef nicely but the Portobello mushroom was a bit to mushroomy for my taste.
We both opted for the Lemon and Olive Oil Sorbet palette cleanser for $4, they served this with little shortbread cookies, it really worked to get our palette ready for dinner.
The standard dessert on the menu is a Spiced Chocolate Pudding with caramelized rice cereal and a Chantilly cream.
It was also available with an orange sorbet for a small extra charge, Mary for this on her plate and I took a taste~it was great but I like my chocolate without orange and would love this on its own (I know the sorbet looks like the olive oil lemon kind we also had but it was definitely orange!). The pudding was spiced with cardamom and the flavors were GREAT!, the caramelized rice cereal wasn’t too sweet and added a nice texture to the pudding, the Chantilly cream rounded out everything nicely.
