Sarah BennettWhen you're a trained pastry chef but eggs are your spirit-animal food (and you've spent the last decade running kitchens at high-end restaurants and winning shows like Cutthroat Kitchen and Chopped), opening a food truck that claims to be “making breakfast dope again” doesn't seem like a gimmick as much as a natural next step.
“I'm obsessed with over-medium eggs,” says Rouha Sadighi, owner of the Rooster Truck, which will launch this weekend with brunch-time stints in front of Blue Bottle Coffee's L.A. shops. “It's difficult to find a place in the city that makes over-medium eggs correctly. They're either raw or hard. Making them right is something I'm taking a lot of care with here.”
The Rooster Truck only has four main dishes on its menu, and three of them are anchored by the elusive over-medium egg.
The “WTF?” finds it plopped atop two pieces of pancake-battered French toast, themselves topped with bacon, goopy house-made preserves and powdered sugar. The “Killit Skillit” lets the half-runny yolk spill all over tater tots, chorizo, avocado and flour tortilla chips, an invention cooked up during an episode of Cutthroat Kitchen that aired last year. And the “Bodega” is a bacon-cheddar breakfast sandwich, made spicy thanks to a dash of “Rooster Sauce,” a custom blend of chili peppers whipped up for the truck by the local makers of Kill Sauce.
Lastly, there's a tater tot–filled bacon breakfast burrito called Rico Suave, which Sadighi says was the best seller during Rooster Truck's inaugural test run on Fairfax Boulevard on Sunday.
The Killit Skillit; Credit: Rooster Truck
“There's nothing attached to breakfast or brunch,” she says of why breakfast is her favorite meal of the day. “Lunch is usually a business meeting. Dinner can be a date or a birthday party. But breakfast and brunch are a no-strings-attached thing. It's when you just want to go and enjoy some food and to give your body something to start the day.”
Sadighi's truck is the culmination of years spent working under other chefs in L.A. and New York City kitchens. After culinary school, she worked as a pastry chef at places like Michelin-starred Joe's in Venice and RockSugar Pan Asian Kitchen. She later moved into chef de cuisine roles at Penelope in New York Ctiy and Public School 310 in Culver City.
After launching a monthlong weekend brunch pop-up at Sangers & Joe in Pasadena late last year (during which the Rico Suave and the WTF? made their debut), she decided to launch her concept with a truck.
Once on the road (check Instagram for times and locations), Rooster Truck will be one of the few food trucks in L.A. that exclusively slings breakfast. Sure, there are the old-school catering trucks that park outside construction sites and office buildings, but the city is lacking in mobile brunches.
“I'm not planning to be the healthiest breakfast around,” Sadighi says. “That's not what it's about. It's about having fun with the food and going back to the way food should be eaten, where you don't have to think about it. Just enjoy it.”
Chef Rouha Sadighi; Credit: Rooster Truck
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