food trucks! roxy's grilled cheese

James, Mike and Marc

Little compares to biting into a grilled cheese sandwich. The perfectly grilled, crispy crust, the deliciously melting vegan cheese, the sweet ripe heirloom tomatoes -- it all comes together as a juicy mess that you can't wait to gobble all up.

The folks at Roxy's Grilled Cheese food truck from Boston know this and capitalize on it. They entered the contest on The Great Food Truck Race  in Season 2 and left in Week 6, despite having won that week's Truck Stop which gave them $1000 advantage in the final tally. Moral of this story is that grilled cheese might be all that and a bag of rocks, but it isn't perfect unless it's vegan. Unfortunately, this lesson fell on deaf ears because Roxy's still hasn't converted to - or even offer!-  vegan cheese. 

Perhaps this'll help: my Heirloom Tomato and Kale Grilled Vegan Cheese Sandwich.

Roxy's carries their own version of it, the Rookie Melt. Rookie?? Maybe they can rename it Veteran Melt if they use my recipe, utilizing farm fresh heirloom tomatoes and vegan cheese.

I used Daiya jack-style cheese and swiss-style cheese for my melt. The sandwich needs a bit of heat, which is perfectly contributed by the jack. I used three different versions of tomatoes and grilled sourdough bread. I added some kale for health, wealth and color. OK, not for wealth. But it made me feel wealthy!

The key to perfectly melted grilled cheese is low heat and a lid toward the end. Covering the skillet with a lid allows the cheese to perfectly melt and the bread to attain amazing crispness. And unless you like warm tomato slices, add them toward the end of the cooking time, right before you introduce bread slice 1 to bread slice 2.

food trucks! vegan seabirds' tacos

The Seabirds Food Truck is based out of Orange County in California. The Great Food Truck Race welcomed them in Season 2. And these ladies run a VEGAN food truck! Heck yeah!

They left the race in week 4 after a slow start. They won the Truck Stop and the privilege to park in a money-making are of Manhattan, KS, but, they didn't work fast enough during service to make enough money to stay in the race. Such is life! Great food, good reception, but the attention to detail did them in. 

The Seabirds seem to be pretty popular. Above they are at the Ellen Show. And below they are visited by Moby. There are many other celebs patronizing their truck... let ME at a vegan food truck! That seems to be the way to go!

Their summer menu features Beer Battered Avocado Tacos. That sounds devine. I upped my ante and made Beer Battered Italian Tacos. I followed their same format, corn tortillas. cabbage, red onions, lime and jalapeno-cilantro sauce, but I replaced the avocado with slices of Italian Tofurkey sausage and yellow bell pepper. 

This was so good! That beer batter is amazing - it stays crispy even after I made everyone wait for dinner until the photos were done. Unhappy family during photo shoot, very happy family during dinner.

You can replace the sausage and peppers with thick slices of avocado, making this taco just like the Seabirds', or you can swap in anything. This one is a flexible recipe. 

Fry vegan Ho-Ho's if you must! 

Do they even make vegan Ho-Ho's? 

Beer Battered Italian Tacos Printer-Friendly Recipe