Catering Truck

By Vince Basehart

January 25 -- Before the catering truck can finish parking on 16th Street, there is already a line of workers waiting curbside for it, drawn from the nearby hospital and doctors' offices by the wake of delicious, greasy air the vehicle leaves behind.

Men and women wearing surgical scrubs and hospital access badges wait under a light rain for Jose, the driver, to emerge from the driver’s seat.

The RV-sized rig is like any other that plies its trade on Santa Monica's streets, but somehow the man and woman who run it elevate the lowly roach coach to something, well, culinary.

Jose is the maitre d’ of sort, greeting the customers -- all of them regulars -- while he pops the hatch on the side of the truck to expose sodas on ice, apples and oranges, juices, bags of chips, candy bars.

But the nurses and X-rays techs, now being joined by hard-hatted construction workers, are all here for the combination of Mexican-meets-America diner grub that makes catering truck lunches a quintessential Southern California street food.

A foodie would probably tag it with some moniker like “Mexi-Cal Fusion.” Carnitas do not typically take up residence with tater tots and jalapenos inside a tortilla anywhere south of the border, but it works here.

Most of the menu is hand written on the marquee beneath the small service window from which the cook, Jose’s wife Maria, smiles.

She doesn’t take your order. Jose does. He greets you and smiles, showing a glint of his silver-capped tooth. He asks kindly, “What may I serve you this afternoon?” and listens attentively to your order with a slight forward lean. For a moment you think you are the only customer in the world. Jose is old-school. He is genteel.

He relays your order in Spanish to Maria. Her hands move amazingly fast when she works, but without any sense of rush. She is a calm and cool professional, slapping hamburger patties on the grill, rolling burritos, spreading cheese onto an omelet already bubbling beside the patties.

Behind her are trays of machaca, grilled onions and peppers, bacon, carne asada, chicken soaking in a dark mole. All homemade, all waiting to be stuffed into giant flour tortillas or between pieces of bread. I can see vats of salsa and industrial-sized plastic containers of ketchup for the fries.

Jose’s demeanor is the same with every customer, from the pair of twenty-something nurses who order chicken tacos without cheese to convince themselves they are sticking to their diets; to the beer-bellied welders; to the two young Jeff Spicoli-looking characters who are probably ditching history class at SaMoHi.

Jose is 38 and is from Tepeyac, a hillside neighborhood in sprawling Mexico City. His baseball cap is decorated with an embroidered Texas longhorn steer. He explains that he and his wife lease the truck. They make nine stops every day throughout Santa Monica, beginning in the morning at a construction site on 11th.

When Maria puts my order in the window, Jose picks it up and delivers it to me. My burrito is wrapped like a present in foil and wax paper, and resting next to it were two slices of cucumber like green poker chips. For a moment it is hard to remember this is a roadside catering truck.

”Enjoy sir. And thank you,” says Jose. And he really means it. What class.