And here I thought I had tried all of the delicious food trucks that San Francisco had to offer… Unfortunately (or fortunately, rather) another one sneaked up on me this past weekend.

My friends had hired the Tomkat food truck to serve as fun dinner fare after a roller-rink birthday party (believe me, TONS of fun). The Tomkat food truck serves both expected and surprising Asian food, from Banh Mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) to Shanghai-style Nian Gao (rice cake noodles), all with the bare-bones decor of a legit food truck: red paper lanterns, minimal signage, and a no-frills paint job.

Tomkat Asian Street Food Truck

Having grown up in the San Gabriel Valley (a very Asian suburb of Los Angeles), I was always exposed to comforting, authentic, and high-quality Asian food. But as far as the bay area goes, I have found that Asian food mainly groups into one of these two categories: the home style, poor-quality places(oily, bad meat, old veggies), or the overly-Americanized, clean, and well-marketed places (top quality meats, over abundance of fresh veggies, inauthentic taste).

Spicy Pork Noodles

Tomkat definitely could not be bucketed into either of those two categories. I had the spicy pork with Shanghai-style rice cake noodles, which were a perfect gummy texture and a nice balance of cool cucumber with seriously spicy pork (they do NOT mess around). I have to admit that when I noticed they used ground pork instead of sliced pork, I was a bit disappointed, but after tasting it, realized it was not a disappointment in quality or flavor. Overall, the noodles were a hit– not only was I a fan, but the ‘ooh’s’ and ‘mmm’s’ of the party spoke volumes.

Alex had the braised beef rice box and I was floored at how tender and carefully prepared the meat was. I’ll surely be back for more of those noodles, and I’m desperately hoping they start to appear at our local Haight Street Off The Grid events.