Local Eats - Chief's Huli Huli BBQ

This food truck opened recently in the Plaza De Los Food Trucks behind the Gosling Express.  I stopped in for a big late lunch the other day. I got the three-meat plate (beef, chicken, and ribs) with sides of Spam musubi (Spam sushi) and pasta salad, with a Hawaiian Sun orange juice to wash it down.

The food is good and made for a satisfying meal.  The meats were pretty tender and had good flavor.  It didn't blow me away, for several reasons:

There's not much color on the plate.  The meat is all kind of dark brown (the chicken is lighter) served with white rice and some soy sauce.  The pasta salad is a pale yellow.  So visually kind of ordinary.

Hawaiian BBQ is generally more of a sweet glaze, but this interpretation is teriyaki.  That's pretty much where all the flavor comes from.  I couldn't really even taste the Spam in the Spam musubi, and that's quite a trick. My favorite meat on the plate was the chicken, which is nice and tender with classic teriyaki flavor.  The other meats were good but not perfect--the beef was just a little mealy, and the ribs had a bit of gristle.

It's an OK lunch, but too expensive for an OK meal.  These are nice people and I wish them well, but they need to up their game.

My Yelp Review

El Barrio BBQ & Catering

El Barrio BBQ and Catering has started bringing their food to the Spring Valley Golf and Disc Club on Saturdays.  But you don't have to play golf to stop in and get something to eat.  I went on in and got their 4-meat plate on a recent warm weekend.

The plate came with pulled pork, pork rib, brisket, chicken, barbecue beans, and potato salad.  Plenty of food but I had no trouble eating all of it, it was so delicious.  You could see the smoke deep into all the meats.  The pulled pork was some of the best I've ever had.  Pulled pork doesn't always have a lot of flavor but this was tangy and tender, would make a great sandwich.  The brisket was very good, with some nice wet pieces that I love.  No knife needed.  The rib was perfect texture, tender but not baby food, with a nice char on the outside and thoroughly smoked.  You could easily just chew right through the gristle if you wanted.  The chicken was right there with the rest--you could see the smoke all the way through the meat, and the leg portion was tender and tasty.

The beans deserve their own paragraph.  They are cooked with burnt pork ends and have an incredibly rich flavor.  The owner says it's a three-day process to prepare them.  I normally don't care about barbecue beans but these are worth ordering a quart on their own.  The potato salad is fine, but unlike the rest of the food it kind of lacked flavor.  That's ok.

It's a family business and they are wonderful people.  You need to come get it soon--that generous 4-meat plate was only $12, I'll bet they raise the price before too long.  I have not found them on social media--just an email address, elbarriobbq@gmail.com.  If you're playing golf on Saturday you need to make time for it, and if not just stop in and pick some up.  It's some of the best barbecue in the area.

Palmanova

This food truck has moved to 5034 Farm to Market 2920, Spring, TX 77388, in front of the gas station. Stopped in the other day to try it out.  I got the jerk leg and thigh, the Jamaican Surprise side, and a rum cake for dessert.  

The jerk chicken was absolutely delicious, a great tangy jerk sauce on tender dark meat. Nice big pieces too, felt like plenty of food.

The Jamaican Surprise is a serving of fried doughballs.  The menu compares them to hush puppies, but I'd say they are more like sourdough (mild) beignets.  Some powdered sugar on them would make a great dessert.  Crunchy outside, tender and chewy in the middle.

The rum cake was a nice finish for the meal.  It was quite dense with a lot of flavor, not too sweet.  Home made and grandma's recipe, according to the proprietor.  Worth a try.

The menu is fascinating and makes me want to come back.  The loaded fries sound very good, and I want to try the cabbage medley.

This is the only Jamaican food in the area, so far as I know.  Fortunately it represents well.  The proprietor is fun to talk to and the food is a great introduction to Jamaican cuisine if you have not tried it before.

My Yelp Review

Tara Grill

This is a family business run by very polite and kind people.  I recommend it based on finding the best of what they have to offer.  I'll describe everything we had.

It was a large two-family dinner and we each got something different, so we really covered the menu. Started off with Papdi Chaat and Punjabi Aloo Samosas.  The Papdi Chaat is just a bit like a pasta salad, only with a garbanzo bean base rather than pasta.  That's a stretch but as close to an American dish as I could come.  There are chickpeas, potatoes, peas, and several other vegetables in a sauce, and it is served cold like a salad with some special crackers to dip with.  But ours was closer to room temperature.  Tasted OK but we did not finish it.  The samosas were potato-filled and nice and crisp on the outside.  The tamarind sauce went well with them.  I've had these with a tangy green sauce before and liked that a bit better.

For mains we had the Tara cheeseburger, chicken fries (a loaded fry plate), Tara fried chicken, Palak Paneer, chicken tikka masala, chicken biryani, Karahi, mixed vegetables, and butter chicken.

The burger on the cheeseburger was way overcooked, but the sauce was very interesting and saved the burger overall.  The chicken fries ordered with it did not work so well.  The steak fries were pretty brown--I like them that way but not all do.  The sauce was not too appealing and we ended up picking around it.

The Tara fried chicken was a real highlight.  Nice crispy outside, and the dark meat was quite tender inside.  Great flavor, you should definitely try it.  If they do the wings the same way those would be good too.

The palak paneer tasted good but was on the mild side.  By default they make their dishes this way but they said they would make them spicy if asked.  We asked for most of the dishes to be spicy, including this one. Some were, some weren't.

The chicken tikka masala was fine, a decent example.  The white meat chunks were kind of large and dense, did not seem like they had been marinated.  The butter chicken was the same story.

The chicken biryani was quite spicy and tasty, a good example of biryani and worth trying.  Very generous portion.

We got the chicken Karahi.  It is a spicy and very umami-heavy dish, I enjoyed it and have not had anything else like it.

The mixed vegetable dish was probably our favorite overall.  A nice mix of potatoes, cauliflower and other vegetables in a delicious sauce.  It had great depth of flavor and we cleaned it up.  A must try.

For dessert we had the Gulab Jamun.  These are cake balls in a heavy syrup.  They usually have cardamom in them but these do not.  This meant that they tasted like syrupy pancakes.  The texture was perfect and we liked them a lot, though I personally missed the cardamom.

The interior is bright white with pretty minimal decor.  The menu is on a screen and you order at the counter. The presentation of the dishes was very beautiful--each came in a nice chafing dish with sterno underneath. Not sure about the sterno--as you take food out the sterno overheats what remains, so we blew it out right away.  Better for passing also, which we did a lot of.  The bathrooms were clean and ready.  The restaurant has been open for about a month and they are still finding their feet.  We wish them well!