My name is Matthew Luera, and recently on behalf of my group and my appetite, I decided to try the food at one of our visiting food trucks at our school. I should start out by first saying that although I am Hispanic, I very much enjoy Chinese-American cuisine. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always up for the typical Mexican-American dish; fajitas, quesadillas, tacos. However, when lunch time comes around, often I think of dumplings, wonton soup, noodles, eggrolls and so forth. This is exactly what I had in mind when it came to having lunch that day, and nothing was going to stop mission of satisfying my appetite of the Far East.
So as I approached, I started thinking actually of the overall look of the truck itself. I’m a marketing major and that’s really because the overall concept of marketing isn’t just fascinating to me, it’s my passion, my mental default, and this truck was simply awesome. If you haven’t seen it in person yet, I’d ask that you at least do that. It’s red, mostly, with the name “Rice Box” written all across the sides. It’s got parts of their menu painted on the ends too, along with Chinese lettering. To add the feel of actually going to a Chinese restaurant they have a “Lucky Golden Cat” in the window, Asian accented lamp shades hanging from the awning, and other trinkets. It was pretty cool.
A quick look over the menu and the corresponding prices, and I thought the prices aren’t too bad, competitive even. After a short while deciding, I ordered the dumplings. It comes with an eggroll, a fortune cookie and its own sauce to carry with. The Rice Box has thought of everything as far as offering as much convenience as possible to it’s customers. I didn’t have cash on me, but not to worry, they had an iPad with a sQuare connected so I just had to swipe my card and use their application to pay and include gratuity. It was surprisingly easy and efficient. They had a good system in place to deal with the crowd of people I was in the middle of. One person taking orders, maybe two others cooking and serving orders. One other person was handling the payments. I couldn’t help but think, this is not their first time handling a crowd. For such a small establishment, being a truck and not a traditional restaurant, they ran it with an efficient manner.
Not too long after ordering, I got my dumplings and yes, they were awesome. The sauce was a mix of soy and something else. It definitely added an extra amount of kick to the dumplings that temporarily made me forget how hot they were, my tongue reminded me. After slowing down my pace, on my last two dumplings, I tried one without the sauce and then again with it. To be honest, they were good just by themselves, but the sauce they offer just adds to the taste in a way that makes you understand that it must be mandatory or you may be missing out from getting the full experience. The eggroll didn’t disappoint either and although I can’t say or it probably won’t come true, the fortune was good too.
In general, it was a very positive experience. I hope that if you are ever in the mood for some good Chinese food and are on a limited budget like myself, you can always keep The Rice Box in mind.
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