Tag: food truck

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Food & Wine Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Pok Cha Food Truck is on a Roll

(left to right) Sarah, Shelby, and Jessica Hurdle, Brandon Jenkins, Savanna Hurdle (Photo: Jim Lord)

Jessica Hurdle thought rolling egg rolls was a good idea.

In other words, she decided to open Pok Cha’s Egg Rolls, a food truck featuring egg rolls and other items.

“I’ve been sitting on this idea for two years,” Hurdle says. “I’m a former school teacher. The pandemic allowed me time to go forward with it.”

Hurdle, a member of the Air National Guard, got the idea when she was on active duty orders at Little Rock Air Force Base. “I visited a food truck there. A Chinese lady was serving Asian food on the base. I really was inspired by her.”

The woman served fried rice and sweet potato fries, but, Hurdle says, “The egg rolls were something she always made, and she made them in a very special way. We exchanged information. She let me visit her to see how her operation would go. She mentored me on the way.”

Hurdle liked the food truck idea. “I thought, ‘I’ve never seen an egg roll food truck. I may be on to something.’”

And she wanted to do something to honor her mom, the late Pok Cha Chang. “Egg rolls for me are a family legacy. Something my mom was known for.”

Her mother put three different kinds of meat — hamburger, chicken, and Spam — in one egg roll. “She was South Korean. Right after the Korean War, she didn’t have any education. She never had a day of education in her life. When she moved to the United States in the late ’70s, she worked in warehouses, restaurants, and for other people. She always talked about selling her egg rolls one day and having her own restaurant, but she never fulfilled it.”

Hurdle got started on her food truck after she resigned from teaching second grade at Hope Sullivan Elementary School in Southaven, Mississippi, and began working at a military job, providing COVID relief during the pandemic.

She got help from chefs Jimmy “Sushi Jimmi” Sinh, Alex Grisanti, and Mike Stanley on how to start a food truck. Last summer, she had Trailer King Builders out of Houston, Texas, custom-build a 16-foot trailer.

Her first gig was at a community center. In addition to the egg rolls, she sold kimchi, bulgogi (Korean barbecue — rib-eye steak marinated in soy sauce, pear juice, and sesame oil) and Korean corn dogs, which are deep-fried and then rolled in sugar. “We actually sold out. We had an overwhelming response from the community. We ran out of plates. We had to send somebody to the store to get more.”

Hurdle, who now works as a health technician at the 164th Medical Group in Memphis, operates her food truck on the side. “Social media has been my best friend. We don’t have a set location. We’re going wherever we’re invited. Schools are booking us. Neighborhood associations are booking us.”

Her daughters Shelby, Sarah, and Savanna help her. “I’m teaching them how to run a business. Teach them life skills.”

Hurdle recently finished her graduate degree to be a school principal, but she already has her orders to serve for six months in Afghanistan with the Air National Guard beginning this fall. But she’s thinking about a restaurant location for her business after her tour of duty is completed.

Meanwhile, her mother’s memory is never far when her food truck hits the road. The Pok Cha logo was inspired by a vintage photo of her mother. “It was taken way before I was even thought of. I had a comic book illustrator, who’s also a veterinarian in Nashville, help me design it. Dr. Greg Shaw.”

The logo, featuring a young raven-haired woman with a blue bow, is another way for Hurdle to honor her mother. “Pok Cha is her given name. When she moved to Memphis, all the Southern people here would call her ‘Pork Chop.’”  

For more information, follow Pok Cha’s Egg Rolls on Facebook. 

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Elevated Diner Fare at Good Groceries Mobile Diner

Chad Getchel and Leah Roberts Getchel (Photo: Leah Roberts Getchel)

Take a chef de cuisine from a fine dining restaurant, add a former personal chef/catering company executive chef, and what do you get?

Good Groceries Mobile Diner.

“My husband is the chef de cuisine at River Oaks Restaurant. Chad Getchel,” says Leah Roberts Getchel. “In 1999, I became a certified personal chef.”

She worked a corporate job at AutoZone for almost nine years before becoming an executive chef for Cotton Bowl Catering. She returned to the corporate world, where her jobs included working for FedEx, Hilton, and St. Jude.

But, she says, “When COVID hit, I lost my corporate job.” Wondering what she was going to do next, Leah thought, “Go back to the food world.”

She and Chad, who was laid off for three months from the restaurant, originally thought about starting a food truck to service corporate offices that lease space and don’t have company cafeterias.

They bought a food truck, which they equipped with a 36-inch stove, flattop, and burners before the lockdown. “People were still going to the offices for the most part. We thought this would be over. Shortly after that, nobody went to work. The offices were empty.”

They noticed more people were patronizing food trucks, so they began serving the general public at farmers markets and neighborhoods. But, she says, “It took a little time for people to adapt to our menu because it’s a little bit more of a high-end restaurant-style menu, not your typical food truck fare.”

Instead of pork, they serve duck because the pork industry is “just riddled with problems,” including inhumane treatment of pigs, Leah says. “We started playing with ducks and made duck breakfast sausage. You can’t tell the difference between it and a pork sausage.”

They serve the Barbecue Duck Sammy — pulled duck with tangy barbecue sauce, cole slaw, and sliced pickles on brioche bread. Their Duck Confit sandwich is slow-cooked duck with mango chutney and a medium-fried egg on toasted brioche. “Egg yolk is my favorite sauce,” she says.

Here Chicky Chicky is marinated chicken on a toasted ciabatta bun with mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato. “We also have the fresh (vegan and nut-free) pesto, lemon juice, olive oil, and melted Provolone.”

Realizing they went “a little too crazy on the duck,” they added a house-made salmon burger with mango chutney and jerk seasoning. They only serve pork if it’s “local and certified humane.”

They call themselves a “mobile diner” because they take traditional diner foods “and elevate them.”

Chad, who works part-time at Good Groceries Mobile Diner when he’s not at River Oaks, is leaving the restaurant in May to work full-time at the food truck. “I really love it,” Chad says. “It’s a lot of freedom. You get to do whatever you want as long as somebody is going to buy it.”

Born in Lansing, Michigan, Chad began cooking early. “I remember asking my mom if I could make an experiment. I’d go into the kitchen and put a whole bunch of random stuff in a frying pan. I ruined a whole bunch of pans when I was five or six.”

Since he played guitar in bands, Chad worked in kitchens because the hours were flexible. Realizing he wasn’t going to make a living playing music, he went the cooking route and went to cooking school at Sullivan University in Lexington, Kentucky.

A Downtown brick-and-mortar restaurant is in the planning stages for Good Groceries Mobile Diner, Leah says. “We’re not making a move on that until September. But, later down the road, we’d love to have a restaurant and keep up with the food truck. It’s a lot of fun.”

To find out where Good Groceries Mobile Diner will be during the week, go to eatgoodgroceries.com or their Facebook page.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Clay’s Smoked Tuna Salad is Smokin’

Abrian Clay, owner of Clay’s Smoked Tuna, never thought he’d end up in the fish business. Or be selling his tuna salad in restaurants and stores, and from a food truck.

“It started when I was in Orange Beach, Alabama, on a vacation and I went to this restaurant on the beach,” says Clay, 36. “I wanted to try something different, and I tried the smoked tuna salad. And it was so good. I asked the waiter, ‘What’s going on with the tuna salad, man? What’s up?’ He said, ‘This guy out here has a tuna farm and he wholesales it to us.'”

Clay thought about it. “No one in Memphis is doing this. No one is wholesaling it. I can do the same thing.”

He went home and made his first batch. “It was delicious. I gave out free samples and never looked back.

“I marinated it in white wine and I smoked it,” Clay says. “I chopped up my ingredients to make the salad [with] the mayo and everything. It was an instant hit.”

Abrian Clay

That was five years ago. He used his Facebook business page to get the word out, and he began delivering the eight-ounce packaged tuna salad to the Mid-South.

His first vendor was the Curb Market in Crosstown Concourse. “I think in four hours we sold $600 worth of tuna.” Then, “Stores started reaching out to me,” he says.

Clay uses yellowfin, also known as “ahi” tuna. “We use fresh tuna made from tuna steaks. Not your canned stuff at all.”

He originally was “going to the Gulf in Louisiana to get the fresh tuna.” Now, he says, “It comes from the Gulf, but I have someone who drops it off.”

Clay, who initially thought about strictly doing wholesale, moved to a commercial kitchen with a drive-through pick-up window. People could pick up individual orders of tuna salad as well as his smoked chicken dip. “We expanded our menu to hot foods as well,” Clay says.

He began selling smoked wing plates, catfish plates, salmon plates, lamb chops, and T-bones. “Everything is smoked on a rotisserie smoker with pecan wood.”

The tuna salad takes nine hours to prepare. “We marinate our tuna steaks in white wine, and we put it on a rotisserie smoker at a certain temperature and let it smoke five hours. It’s a strenuous process.”

After two and a half years at the commercial kitchen, Clay transitioned to his food truck, where he continued selling his salad, dip, and hot plates.

His truck is at East Parkway and Summer. “That’s a busy intersection,” he says. “A lot of people are getting off Sam Cooper and going to and from the zoo.”

Growing up in North Memphis, Clay helped his dad cook before he took on the job of cooking breakfast for his parents on weekends. “I would always experiment. Like I would give them eggs, toast, and orange juice, but I would add nutmeg and parsley to the eggs.”

His parents suffered through those experimental breakfasts, but Clay says, “They boosted my confidence and acted like they enjoyed it.”

He got his bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in business administration, but he was interested in making and selling a product.

Clay still is surprised at his career path. “I had an epiphany with myself when I started,” he says. “I noticed all day I was going to people’s houses, delivering them containers of tuna salad. I was like, ‘This is going to be my history? This is what I’m going to tell my children I was doing at that age? Driving to people’s houses and bringing them tuna salad?'”

Clay’s food truck is open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. He also delivers. His smoked tuna salad is in stores, including Cordelia’s Market and DeeO’s Seafood.

For more information or to order, call (901) 848-5640 or go to clayssmokedtuna.com.
To see a video of a Clay’s Smoked Tuna, watch it below:

Clay’s Smoked Tuna Salad is Smokin’

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

The She Shed Food Truck: Not ‘Girly Food’

CREDIT: Morgan Newsom

Get ready for The She Shed to tootle down the street.

The pink food truck, slated to open in September, will be manned by Kathleen Barth and MK Dunston.

“It looks like a little cottage on wheels,” Barth says. “Kind of a rosy pink. It’ll have ivy on the outside. Very girly. But not girly food.”

Morgan Newsom

Kathleen Barth and The She Shed

They’ll specialize in “big-ass man sandwiches,” she says. “A sandwich that you’ve got to do the hunch. When you’re getting ready to take a bite, you’ve got to get your sandwich with both hands and make sure you’re not going to get it all over your belly or your boobs. Brace yourself, open up that trap, and munch. That’s the hunch.”

This began last April when Dunston saw a photo of one of Barth’s creations on Facebook, and then saw Barth’s other food posts. Everything looked like something she would make. “We have exactly the same cooking style,” Dunston says.

“Rustic is a great word,” Barth says. “We plate our food the same. We stack things — your carb on the bottom, potatoes, rice, then your veggies and proteins on top.”

After corresponding for a few weeks, Barth asked Dunston if she wanted to go halves with her on a food truck. The truck originally belonged to a woman who planned to use it for her dog rescue business. “She turned it into a giant-ass doghouse on wheels,” she says. “It actually has a roof with shingles.”

A month later, Barth and Dunston met each other in person. “I just sent her a message via Facebook and asked if she wanted to hang out one day and cook together,” Barth says.

“We gave each other a hug like we knew each other forever,” Dunston says.

Barth, owner of 901 Thyme Catering, began cooking at home about eight years ago. “I like to cook Italian, Mediterranean style. I like a lot of Asian influences. I really like to cook all the regions.”

Last year, Barth worked with Spencer and Kristin McMillin when they were at Caritas Village. “He’s kind of been my mentor. He taught me a lot of technique. It was an honor to work with both of them.”

When the pandemic hit, Barth and Dunston were involved with Caritas’ Feed the Frontline program where chefs fed more than 2,000 meals to front line workers and people in the community.

When she was 10, Dunston began cooking for her siblings. “First thing I ever made was country fried steak with gravy,” she says. “I watched my grandmother make it 100 times. I was convinced I could do it. I screwed up the gravy at first, but I figured it out. When I became a grown person and started having babies, I figured I’d better learn how to cook all these things so I could feed the kids.”

Last November, Dunston began making food people could order online. “I would just put out one plate, and people would order that.”

She worked as a bartender/manager at Blue Monkey until the pandemic hit. “After quarantine started, I thought I should kick food into high gear. I wasn’t sure how I was going to earn money. That’s when I launched Barricade Breakfast, Lockdown Lunch, and Quarantine Cuisine. I started doing breakfast, lunch, and dinner every week.”

The Frenchy, one of Dunston’s items, will be included at The She Shed. “It’s like French dip and French onion soup had a baby,” she says. “It’s a slow-roasted shaved prime rib topped with roasted black pepper, Gruyere cheese, and caramelized onion on sourdough, served with a side of au jus.”

Another will be Barth’s signature dish — a garden veggie pie, which she describes as “like a classic tomato pie,” but with zucchini, fresh herbs, and topped with a cheese blend.

Desserts will include Dunston’s pecan blondie with Southern pecan ice cream and a Khalua drizzle.

The She Shed will travel “wherever anyone will have us,” Barth says. “Anywhere they want man sandwiches.”