Hapa SF: Mobile Filipino…
Hapa SF, tucked all the way in the back of the Eat Real festival, had $5 burritos. Well, they had $5 half-burritos available. They also had a small bowl of chicken adobo for $5 and seven pieces of lumpia for $5. I stood on the sidelines and watched what everyone was ordering, against the popularity of the bowl of adobo, I ordered a sisig burrito and an order of lumpia. A bit of a mistake.
We stood in the shade of the back of the truck, trying to avoid standing under the merciless blazing sun. The burrito came up in no time, the lumpia was another story. The sisig burrito should have been renamed, the rice burrito. The ratio of meat to rice was exaggeratedly fifty to one. Bland rice, with some cilantro and a tablespoon’s worth of minced of meat. Period.
Most food trucks can’t accommodate massive amounts of equipment, like fryers, which is why it’s so amazing that most of them are producing brick-and-mortar worthy food. So, when you’re parked at a food festival, you’re selling lumpia, but you don’t have room for a fryer…what do you do? Put the fryers outside, behind the truck. Sounds relatively simple, doesn’t it?
We continued to wait for the lumpia. Ah, here’s the disadvantage of having your fryers outside. You get an order, you direct it to the person who’s frying, you take the uncooked lumpia outside, you carefully fry, an inspector gets in your way and bothers you while you’re working (such is the case in this instance), and then you have to bring them back in. It doesn’t seem like much, but those few seconds of walking outside and inside, throughout the day, make a difference. But, honestly, the wait was so worth it.
Those mini golden nuggets filled with shrimp and chicken puree were so delicious. I could have shoved all seven, exceedingly boiling liquid inside, pockets of danger into my mouth. Not greasy. Shatteringly crunchy, almost puff pastry-like. Quite possibly, the best lumpia I’ve had in a really long time. Kudos to you, Hapa SF. I just wish I would have gone with the adobo.
Find Hapa SF here:
and here: http://hapasf.com/
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