KUALA LUMPUR, April 5 — Malaysians are no strangers to food on wheels. In fact, it’s a daily affair in Malaysia, where we’re used to seeing small vans peddling cendol, rojak, assam laksa and the list goes on.
Usually, you find them tepi jalan or at the side of a pavement near high foot traffic areas. Sometimes they are parked at night markets. On occasion, the lok-lok truck is invited to a street party.
Last year, a new breed of roving food trucks started to emerge. These newbies tend to steer clear from local fare, prefering to focus on Western items to create their own niche.
While they’re not the first movers into the food truck business, the sheer numbers of people jumping on the bandwagon makes it a food trend that we can’t seem to shake off.
Curbside Cantina was one of the first food trucks that hit our streets in this new wave. Started last August, the food truck is run by husband-and-wife team: Awangku Irawan aka Tubby and Noreen Ramli. Both are no strangers to the food business as they ran The Pink Sage from 2008 to 2011.
Noreen’s foray into F&B started after she graduated with a BA in International Relations and was pulled back to help her family’s business, a restaurant at The Ascott Kuala Lumpur. Her husband, Tubby who mainly does the cooking for Curbside Cantina, often dabbles in music DJ gigs on the side.
“When we had the restaurant, Tubby had the idea for a food truck and being F&B operators with our catering, he thought it seemed like the right concept to operate. However, at that time we still had the restaurant and didn’t have enough research on the permits, ” explained Noreen.
After their restaurant closed, they moved into food catering. The food truck idea appealed to the duo who often had to shift and dismantle heavy cooking equipment to set up satellite kitchens at various venues.
“Technically we could house all the equipment in one mobile truck. That is why our truck is a little larger than your common food truck, as it’s fully fitted. We have two ovens, all sorts of warming equipment, freezer, chiller and a full-size deep fryer inside it.”
Since the food truck was a huge investment, they decided to start serving food to the public to recoup their investment. “As catering is not an everyday event, we decided to come up with a product that can fill the days off to make back our investment.”
Curbside Cantina’s menu focuses on Mexican fare — tacos, quesadillas, sandwiches like cemitas — ideal as food-to-go. Dessert is in the form of churros that you dip into chocolate sauce.
The choice to go Mexican was purely because they were already popular for serving quesadillas and tacos in The Pink Sage. Moreover, they didn’t want to churn out burgers, since the market was too saturated.
“We thought the timing was right for the tacos. It’s a healthier product and we’re a bit more conscious about nutritional values. Even though it’s fast and street food, it’s completely fresh.”
Noreen explains that their policy is food is not kept beyond a few days. Most of their products are also prepped on the spot. “Our specialty is the tacos but our main focus is to deliver a fresh tasting product.”
As you taste their food, you would notice it’s quite unique, tasting unlike that at any other Mexican joint in town, as their sauces are made from scratch.
“Everything is an original recipe. I think it’s very important for us, as it’s our identity. In the end, if everyone is going to be buying the same kind of fish, cheese or tortillas, what is going to differentiate us from the rest.”
One thing Noreen rules out is churning out fusion items, and they prefer sticking to the Mexican way of things. “We try to be a little more experimental but the thing is we love the product ourselves that we want to do justice to it. Especially for me, it’s nicer to keep the product authentic and not water it down.”
Each order of their savoury food items also comes with crunchy pappadums. This is a nod towards Noreen’s family heritage. “It’s just an ode to my own family, as every meal we ate with my grandparents, there would be pappadums as my grandmother was from Penang. Moreover, everyone knows pappadums.”
Following a recent health scare for Tubby where he discovered he is gluten intolerant, they have also recently rolled out gluten-free corn tortillas made in-house, using a specially built tortilla press.
The menu at Curbside Cantina took some time to balance out. Initially, they had a few staples plus a rotation of specials. Noreen explains that this was to keep a balance for their regular customers and newcomers, so everyone had sort of something to eat. “The truck has limited operations and we can’t do a full menu like a restaurant.”
However, customers would just order the same few items and the crowd would get overwhelming. “We would park and there would be 20 people in line already.”
Since they did not want people to wait too long, they decided to shorten the time by focusing on fewer items, so they can churn the food out as fast as they can.
“We still cook things to order like the fish and chicken. It’s not sitting there for 10 minutes before we send it out, as we want to keep to the fresh factor.” As they slowly grew, they are getting more adept to balancing out the menu and customers’ demands.
One of the biggest challenges Curbside Cantina faces is the permits for their food truck business, which are still pending approval. In the meantime, Noreen works hard to ensure they toe the line with the relevant authorities to not jeopardise their application.
Recently, Curbside Cantina has started to penetrate the lunch market twice weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with a permanent parking spot at Wisma MCA.
Noreen is happy as it was their original idea to serve the office crowd. “That is all we want to serve as if we truly wanted to serve dinner all the time, we would have opened a restaurant.”
With this new shift of focus, they will probably be out less in the evenings. Noreen admits it’s a much more ideal situation for them, as they rather do lunch which allows them to take bookings for catering in the evenings.
In May, Noreen reveals that Curbside Cantina will be doing a pop-up where they will be operating the kitchen of an establishment which she can’t disclose at this moment.
It’s not their first time doing a pop-up, as they ran supper clubs for almost six months in 2013 and have taken over the kitchens of places like No Black Tie and Beast in Intermark KL.
Unlike their previous pop-ups that were temporary, this stint will last three months.“In a way, it’s probably our foot back into something a little more permanent but then the shape of things to come is quite different already. It’s not our restaurant and it’s someone else’s space. They focus on one thing and we focus on something else and I think that is a better move forward.”
The pop-up will be a casual dining place, where a few staples will be served and every week, you can find new items on the menu. The duo are looking forward to the pop-up as it’s a chance to get their creative juices going.
Since they got the food truck, most of the clients just want the truck for catering and that means tacos and more tacos, limiting their scope to serve their other creations like beetroot smoked salmon.
For inspiration, the two foodies often visit new eateries to tap what’s happening in the dining scene. They also get inspired by YouTube videos of young independent Canadian chefs who are doing innovative things with their fresh produce.
“It’s like your four-year old kid who would watch the makeup tutorials on YouTube. Our make-up tutorials are watching these independent chefs.” If Noreen had her chance, she would love to have an all-seafood slant for the food served on the truck.
“It would be a lot of seafood dishes, but in the South American or Latin American way. The fish taco is the first step.” Unfortunately, as Noreen realises, it’ll be hard to convince Malaysians to try something unknown to them, like Latin American cuisine.
With regards to the future of the food truck scene where better quality food is served, Noreen believes that the landscape will change as customers will keep demanding something better.
“I hope that the others will get challenged to keep improving their product. Even for us, everyday we’re still thinking about how to improve our product and make sure that every new person that comes to the truck is going to enjoy the food.”
Follow Curbside Cantina KL on Instagram (https://instagram.com/curbsidecantinakl/) to find out their next locations, opening times and menu.
