American Flavors & Taco Picasso, the Best Food Trucks in San Diego!

Jamin & Ornela Toombs are the the husband and wife chef owners of Food Trucktopia. Among their fleet of food trucks is American Flavors, a one stop shop for amazing comfort food, with a elevated twist. And Taco Picasso, a taco truck pumping out some of the best tacos here is San Diego!

Kyle Whissel joins Jamin and Ornela to get a peak behind what goes into making their amazing food.

If you are interested in where these trucks are going to be next so you can try them yourselves or want to book them for catering, check out their website here: https://foodtrucktopia.com/

Instagram

American Flavors: https://www.instagram.com/americanflavors/

Taco Picasso: https://www.instagram.com/tacopicassotrk/

Video Transcription

Today, on Everything East County, we're going to do things a little different than we normally do. We're at Santee Town Center Community Park. We've got two food trucks for you, husband and wife team. They run Taco Picasso and American Flavors. Let's get to it. East County, San Diego has a lot to offer. Amazing food, a rich history, tons of community events and amazing people in organizations. I'm Kyle Whissel with Whissel Realty Group and this is Everything East County. All right, we're here. We're looking at two food trucks today, it's going to be a fun day. So we're going to start on your truck, Taco Picasso, tell me a little bit about it.

So Taco Picasso was born in 2015 July and we've been rolling in San Diego street since then. We work a lot with local people that can supply us fresh food daily. So for example, in American Flavors, we get fresh bread baked daily. On Taco Picasso. I go pick up tortillas, freshly made every morning. So it just makes a whole difference.

[Kyle] I love it. Very cool. And so what are some of the dishes that you guys do on Taco Picasso?

So on Taco Picasso, one of the, I would say the customer's favorite and my personal favorites that actually I'm going to cook for you, Kyle today, is our fish tacos. I think it's one of the best in San Diego.

Well, I'm ready to eat, let's make some food.

Yeah, let's go. First, I'm going to start cooking some fish tacos. So this is our beer battered cod that it's going to deep fry for a few minutes. We also make our rice with a little bit, our seasoning that we make. So I'm going to put a little bit of that on a plate. With a little bit of black beans. So in a fish taco we have freshly made pico de gallo that we make daily on site, cotija cheese, and on that fish taco, we make avocado lime sour cream.

So we heard about her truck.

Yes you did.

And I know this is a little bit of a family battle. So tell us about your truck.

Everybody can have a burger, everybody, they can have some chicken tenders. Everybody's had Buffalo chicken. Everybody's had pulled pork, but instead, now we're throwing it on the grill cheeses and we're throwing it on top of fries. We're loading up burgers with pork.

[Kyle] What's the number one seller on the menu?

By far, in a way the pulled pork grilled cheese.

[Kyle] And then you guys have vegetarian options too.

[Guest] Absolutely, we do a beyond burger, which has does really, really well for us. We also can, we do have the option to do some other things that we can do, like a plain grilled cheese. We do a BLTA grilled cheese as well, we can subtract the bacon. And if we are doing private events and somebody does have some vegan or vegetarian options that we really do need to get on there, we can definitely made a tailor to that as well.

Cool, man. Well, let's go make some food.

Absolutely. Let's go, my man. All right. So we're going to start with our barbecue burger, is probably one of the best burgers you can have if you're extremely hungry. It's going to have pulled pork on top of it and we're also going to do a burger patty, we're going to do some grilled onions as well. So to start that out, we're going to do our grilled onions first, 'cause they're going to take a little bit longer. So we're going to find a hotspot on the grill, which is normally the back of the grill. While those were cooking, we're going to throw our burger down. This is a third pound Angus beef patty, that is a locally sourced item. And again, it is specially formulated for us because of our buns and how what we do with the buns. Fun fact, mild cheddar will melt easier than sharp cheddar. So if you guys are ever making grilled cheese at home or burgers, get the mild cheddar, it'll melt a lot faster and a lot easier. I'm just going to place those red on there. I think it was Carl's Jr, that had that thing back in the day was if it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face. Let's slide this bad boy, right over here, cup our toasted bun, this is going to get some spring mix on it, basically for some freshness. One thing that I will say about our burgers, the main reason why a lot of them do taste a lot better than I guess your normal average burger would be, all of our ingredients come cold off the cold line. So normally when you get a burger at your local fast food restaurant or anywhere else has been sitting for a little while. So you got your hot ingredients mixed some of your cold ingredients. And because of that, you get the same temperature through. So with us, you're getting it made fresh. You know, your tomato is going to be cold, your lettuce is going to be cold. If we're talking about some more of a normal burgers, you're definitely going to get cooler onions and stuff like that. It creates a better overall feel for it altogether.

All right, guys, I'm excited to dive into this. Again, this is not your normal food truck. This is all like gourmet crafty food truck food. So I'm excited to dive in, beer battered cod, this stuff is looking delicious. You know, I'm going to put a little lime on here, It really make sure to bring that flavor out. That's very, very good. You got the crispiness of the beer battered cod on them. And then the Pico, they make this Pico fresh every single day. So there's such a strong flavor profile on that. You guys like food truck food, you like Mexican food, you got to come get this. This is delicious, delicious stuff. So come check it out, Taco Picasso, American flavors. These stuff's phenomenal, guys. If you guys enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to share some more people can find out about these guys. Throw a comment down there, tag a friend, come check it out. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Everything East County.