Erik Cho is the chef behind FrySmith, one of an ever-growing number of mobile food trucks exploding onto the scene post-Kogi Los Angeles. While mobile chip shops are huge in England, they have yet to take off in the states, so Erik is well positioned to take advantage of the hungry throngs at all hours of the day or night. We caught up with the smith himself and asked him 7 questions...
TACO: What was the inspiration for the truck?
ERIK: Food-wise, fries with stuff on top has been at the back of my mind for a while. Possibly my favorite thing to eat as a teenager was grilled chicken, chili, tomatoes, onions and yellow chiles on top of fries sauced with a mix of ketchup and the juice from the chiles. I used to make it for myself at my mom’s burger store. My sister called it Alpo. It was delicious.
Truck-wise, there are just a ton of benefits to being mobile. It’s trendy now, sure, but as a business it’s great because you can take your food directly to where people want it. And there’s lower overhead, so it lets you offer good eats at good prices. And I never have to clean a bathroom.
Rajas Fries with Steak
TACO: What are your favorite taco (or other foods) trucks in LA?
ERIK: El Taurino and La Estrella are two standbys for me. Man, I could use a taco or four right now. Among other trucks, Kogi and the Green Truck have definitely been influential to us.
TACO: What will the menu look like?
ERIK: The menu’s the five core items that are up on our site plus a special or two. The specials will be pretty much whatever I feel like eating on any given day and sometimes they might not even be fries.
Chili Cheese Fries
TACO: How did you convert your truck to run on vegetable oil (very very cool idea btw)? Does the oil you use produce enough to run the truck?
ERIK: The truck’s not converted yet, but all the equipment’s ready to go. When the kitchen’s finally finished (hopefully soon), we’ll take it in. It takes about two days, and there are lots of folks who do veg oil conversions on diesel engines in SoCal. Since I want to change it a lot for freshness, our fry oil should be enough to run the truck. If my calculations are messed up, we can always bum some oil from our truckin’ brethren.
TACO: Do you like asada fries? If they are not on your menu, they should be :)
ERIK: Mmm, asada fries. Me and my stomach have heard of and experienced them. I think they probably overlap a bit with the rajas fries that I’m doing, so we probably won’t be serving them. Hmm, I could do a version as a special, though.
TACO: Where will the truck operate, do you plan to cover a lot of area or stay close to one part of town?
ERIK: We’ll be everywhere. At the beginning, our plan is to canvas the city to drum up interest. After that, we may settle in on more regular locations.
Kimchi Pork
TACO: Does it get hot inside with all the frying going on? How do you deal with exhaust issues, etc?
ERIK: We have a big AC in the truck. And a big exhaust system that’ll probably suck the cool air out as soon as it comes in. So, it’s going to be hot. Not sure yet if that means desert hot or fires of hell hot, but we’ll deal with what comes.
