Burger Photo Gallery (click pictures to enlarge)

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THE JOINT

The Mini Burger Truck is a gourmet food truck in Sacramento, CA.  They, along with almost 2 dozen other mobile food vendors, recently participated in the city’s first mobile food festival: SactoMofo.  Unlike other cities around the nation, Sacramento’s mobile food laws are more restricting than welcoming of the growing gourmet mobile food craze. The SactoMofo event helped to raise local political awareness of the demand for this convenient style of dining and also showed the city some of the great foods that can be had on food trucks these days.

I actually tried the Phat Pig burger back in March when the Mini Burger Truck made one of it’s many scheduled stops around the city. I think this was my 3rd or 4th time feasting on the Mini Burger Truck’s offerings.  I was already a big fan of their Ninja burger on their standard menu, but on this burger outing I decided to try one of their monthly seasonal special burgers that I had been hearing so much about on Twitter.

With a name like Phat Pig, how could you go wrong? :)

THE BURGER

The Phat Pig burger is described as having Five Dot Ranch beef, prosciutto, brie, arugula and green apple slaw.

The Five Dot Ranch beef specification is significant because it is a local, sustainable ranch committed to raising cattle that is 100% free of antibiotics or additional hormones. They provide range free, premium beef to several great restaurants and it’s a true testament to the pride the gourmet food truck culture takes in the meals they serve when the owners go out of their way to source quality foods for their dishes.

When my trio of burgers was delivered, I was a bit nervous to try a burger that had apples on it. If you would have told me a year ago that I’d be eating a burger with apples on it, I would have said you were talking crazy. Still, I had heard so many good things about it from random people commenting about the Phat Pig burger on Twitter that I was confident enough to order 2 with a backup of my old favorite: The Ninja.  I ate the Ninja first; got satisfied by its spicy kick and then dove into my pigs.

How shall I put this? The Phat Pig burgers were scrumptilitious.  Yes, they were so good I had to make up a word for them. The perfectly cooked beef patty covered with the salty prosciutto seemed to tango with the creamy texture and slightly sweet taste of the brie cheese. As if a fancified  bacon cheeseburger wasn’t enough, the Mini Burger Truck chefs thought “Hey, let’s put a first class side salad on TOP of the burger and see if they go for it”.  And I went for it! It was like a Mulvaney’s Little Del Rio salad on top of a premium mini hamburger. In all seriousness though, the combination of ingredients in this hamburger were obviously well thought out. Even though it was raining that day, I almost went back to the truck to give the chefs a high five for delivering such a great sandwich.

Even though this is a burger review, this post wouldn’t be complete if I failed to mention the heavenly sweet potato tots from Mini Burger Truck.  Truth be told, I generally hate sweet potato fries. People rave over them when they have them on menus, but I’d take a handful of traditional potato french fries over a mountain of sweet potato fries any day. So when folks told me how good the sweet potato tots were at Mini Burger Truck, I sort of took it with a potato sack of salt, figuring we just had different taste buds. Boy was I wrong!  The flavor of these sweet potato tots were unlike any sweet potato fries I’ve ever tasted. Such a simple savory side seasoned superbly severely swayed my aversion to sweet potato dishes.

THE VERDICT

I was already a fan of the Mini Burger Truck (and the whole gourmet food truck culture and community), but the Phat Pig burger actually barged its way in front of the Ninja Burger, the previous front runner. Davin and his crew outdid themselves with this one.  The only downside was that this is one of their seasonal burgers, so I probably won’t have a chance to try this burger again for awhile.

Sound off in the comments below! What’s your favorite food truck meal?

Tags: apples, featured, food truck, national hamburger month, sacburgermonth