Swisher wanted to try this lunch truck that
has gotten a bunch of press in the several
decades it's been in business and prevailed
on me to join him.

Benny's Food Wagon is an Anchorage institution:
at one time it was one of those roving facilities
always on the run from licensing authorities and
the landowners on whose property it was squatting,
but now it is parked in a relatively permanent
spot, so everyone knows where it is. There are
supposed to be lunch crowds, but we didn't see
any (it was pretty early, though).

He got two beef tamales with hot sauce on the side;
I the #5 combo, a beef taco and a bean burrito with
hot sauce on the side. Both were accompanied by
Mexican rice and refried beans.

It's takeout only, so we waited in the parking lot
for the meals, on disposable plates with foil on
top, to come out, and then took them home, by which
time the food was cold. Ah, well.

Mine was rather edible, pretty soso - the burrito,
hard-fried in the chimichanga style, was much better,
the outside shattering crisp and the filling tasty,
whereas the taco, whose filling was ground beef and
potato, making it taste hashy, which I like, was
soft and limp, despite having been made with a crisp
corn tortilla in the American way. Lettuce and tomato
bits were extraneous and very floppy. The rice was
okay, your standard salty red rice with a splash of
red stuff on top; the beans were between rare and
medium-rare, bad for beans, in contrast to the burrito
filling, which had been quite good. There was no hot
sauce in evidence anywhere, and the food would have
benefited from some. Swisher had a bottle of La Victoria
salsa brava in the fridge, so I used some - it turned
out to be not very spicy either. There was a lot of food.

I had a bite of a tamale, and I think they were maybe
better than my stuff, despite there being no hot sauce
on his plate either, and he ate them right down and said
that he might conceivably go there again, if only for the
generosity of the portions. He disliked the beans as well,
so I mashed up his and mine both and saved them for later
experimentation. Next day, as we were driving past, he
revised his opinion downward to the level of "unlikely to
revisit."

In the evening we weren't very hungry, but I made patties
out of the leftover beans - cooked the mash in oil until
they were crispy on both sides; they were much improved
thereby. Served them with the leftover 6 oz each of steak,
which was just as good as before.

--

In search of the elusive lunch
I told Swisher I'd take him out for a burger at this
place Max's that's within a mile of his place, but it
turned out to be closed. So I suggested Tommy's Burgers,
which is reputed to have the best burger in Alaska
(Thrilllist, HuffPo, and others, likely from the same
source); so off we went, and we couldn't find it. Turns
out it's teensy, and there's little or no Tommy's on the
sign, which says "Burger Stop." I didn't notice the place
at all; Swisher saw it but was focused on the Tommy's
part, so we drove past it. Ah, well, as there's no turning
back, we decided to find the other Kava's - we've been to
the one on Muldoon a bunch of times - a respectable
breakfast spot with some savory things for other times of
day, but this one at the Northway Mall was the original,
in an old Pizza Hut building. Guess what? It was not only
closed but long out of business, by the looks of it. The
hastily-concocted plan C was to go back toward home and
the regular Kava's, where we were seated almost immediately
at a booth in the back of the room.

For some reason our roles tend to reverse at this place,
and Swisher had lunch food and I had breakfast food.

I got the chicken-fried steak breakfast platter with a
half-pound CFS with lots of gravy, eggs over easy, an
over half-pound puck of hash browns, and a short stack of
pancakes. The meat was mystery but fried deftly in a thick
but tasty batter, smothered in surprisingly tasteless
white gravy. The potatoes were cooked hard crisp on one
side only, basically uncooked on the other side. I ate the
crunchy tops and mixed the white rest with Tabasco in an
effort to make them edible. Eggs were eggs, though how one
can get a runny bottom and a set yolk I don't understand.
The pancakes were good as always, but they came without
syrup, so I had them with a couple teaspoons of the coffee
sugar that was already on the table; this was fine, because
it let the taste of honest flour and eggs shine out - this
is not a joint that uses the pre-staled Bisquick the way
so many others do. The pepper shaker was most necessary
for this meal, which also reminded me of my disdain for
Tabasco, which contributed vinegary nothingness without
much heat. All in all not my ideal meal, but still decent.

Swisher's BLT and crinkle cut fries were as expected.

We ate almost every scrap of our rather generous allotments;
the waitress noted this with some surprise and asked us
dubiously if we needed dessert, which we didn't.

The bill was reasonable, even though they forgot to give
us (and I forgot to check) the senior discount.
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
* Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)

On 07-03-18 20:25, Michael Loo <=-
spoke to All about 961 more Alaska food <=-

Swisher wanted to try this lunch truck that
has gotten a bunch of press in the several
decades it's been in business and prevailed
on me to join him.

Benny's Food Wagon is an Anchorage institution:
at one time it was one of those roving facilities
always on the run from licensing authorities and
the landowners on whose property it was squatting,
but now it is parked in a relatively permanent
spot, so everyone knows where it is. There are
supposed to be lunch crowds, but we didn't see
any (it was pretty early, though).

Not too long ago, we went to an event at the Howard county fair grounds.
There were a lot of food trucks there and we tried a couple of them. By
far the best was one that offered BBQ stuff. Gail had some pulled pork
and I had brisket. Both were very good. The problem is that we never
really know where the truck is going to be. They have some sort of a
web site / facebook page, but I don't recognize the events they say they
are going to -- plus sometimes I don't see the listing until it is too
late. If they were at a permanent location not too far, we would be
going back there often.

Not sure if I'd like this version of brisket. Giant has full brisket on
sale for $1.99 this week, but we don't have any room for one.

... Shipwrecked on Hesperus in Columbia, Maryland. 23:43:57, 03 Jul 2018
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30

--- Maximus/NT 3.01
* Origin: Owl's Anchor (1:261/1466)