Food truck reviews: NorthFresh Sushi and The Wagyu Wagon

While each food cart offers different types of food, they all have in common that each has a strong identity and outstanding cuisine.

The Wagyu Wagon

Renee (pronounced Ray-knee) Bouma and her husband came to Tumalo in 2013 and started the 2Sisters Ranch to raise Wagyu beef cattle. Committed to purity, the cattle they purchased were 100% Japanese Kobe beef. Much of the Wagyu beef in the U.S. is what the industry calls “F1,” or crossbred. That is, the cattle are 50% Angus and 50% Wagyu. Wagyu’s excellent flavor and tenderness come from extreme fat marbling. Crossing the cattle with Angus would lessen the amount of marbling.

The Boumas are dedicated to producing the best quality Wagyu beef. The cattle are almost exclusively grass-fed from nutrient-rich local hay. They are never sent to a feedlot and are raised in a non-stressful manner. The result is the highest level of marbling that makes for highly tender, juicy meat.

While they had been selling small amounts of hamburger to various restaurants, they felt it would be a better business decision to open their own food cart. The Wagyu Wagon is now the only place to get a 2Sisters Ranch Wagyu burger. As the number of animals on the ranch is limited, they knew they couldn’t serve 200 burgers a day. They couldn’t be part of a busy food cart pod. They brought in fine-dining chef Ingrid Rohrer (who has been the chef for 10 Below and the Broken Top Bottle Shop), to create a gourmet burger menu.

There are only three burgers on the menu — the Umami Burger, Green Chili Ranch Burger, and the Wagyu Grass Roots Burger. All ingredients on the burger are made from scratch and are served on Sparrow bakery buns. Burgers come with French fries or potato salad for $20. The price is reasonable when you consider that some burgers run upwards of $13, and fries can cost an extra $5.

I tried the exotic Umami burger. Black garlic-foie gras aioli added umami (meaty) flavor and creaminess. Bacon jam and fried shallots bring a sweet earthiness. It’s balanced by fresh, cool butter lettuce and house-pickled cucumbers made with fresh dill. For those foie gras fans, an extra slab of foie gras is available for $7. While most burgers can be messy and drip from an overabundance of sauces on the sandwich, this burger dripped from the juiciness of the meat. Still, the Sparrow bun held together through the last bite.

We also had the Wagyu Grass Roots Burger. It is a more traditional preparation with sweet caramelized onions, tomatoes, butter lettuce, and pickled cucumbers. Garlic aioli and Havarti cheese add a creative touch.

Burgers come with French fries. Fried in rich tallow (rendered from their cattle’s fat), you can choose plain or fries sprinkled with shiitake mushroom or green chili. The fries come with a burger sauce for dipping.

On a subsequent visit, I tried the chili cheese fries. A generous serving of potatoes is smothered in a well-balanced house-made chili with chunks of meat, beans, and tomatoes. The pile was topped with cheddar, raw red onion, and a dollop of sour cream. These could be the highest quality chili fries I’ve ever tried.

NorthFresh Sushi

When visiting a food truck, it’s unlikely that you think of getting sushi. One might be concerned about the freshness of the fish. But your fears can be assuaged by the food cart’s name “NorthFresh.” Regular deliveries of high-quality fish and many customers assure that it will not only be fresh, but it will also be tasty.

Owner Jeffrey Berneski seems to be aiming for perfection in his NorthFresh Sushi cart at The Bite lot in Tumalo.

Following the success of his first food truck in Salem, Berneski opened the truck in Tumalo earlier this year and is poised to do even better with this second location.

Although he’s not serving sushi in a restaurant on a plate, he is exacting about how the sushi is placed into a box. The plating should artistically enhance the high quality of the fish. Berneski discussed that restaurants spend their money for servers and rent to create ambiance. With a food cart, he can focus his budget on buying the best fish. The price of the rolls, poke bowls, and so forth directly reflect the quality of the fish he uses. High-quality tuna and other fish is flown in from Hawaii and California. Ōra King Salmon is flown in from an Island off New Zealand. It is so fatty and tender that this Chinook salmon is called the “Wagyu of the sea”.

The salmon’s flavor was remarkable. It was fresh, bursting with a rich salmon flavor and a sweet finish. I had the salmon on the Legend roll. Like a Rainbow Roll, the Legend roll is also topped with hamachi, tuna, shrimp, and avocado. Equally noteworthy, the roll had crab inside. Chunky pieces of wild-caught Canadian deep-sea crab were sweet, full-flavored meat without a hint of fishy ocean flavor. This roll was indeed near perfection.

Good fish can be ruined by stale, poorly cooked rice. The well-made rice at NorthFresh enhances the fish. Tender, chewy, and fresh, the rice is often served lukewarm to make spicy nigiri taste even better.

I also had a poke bowl. This is not the kind of poke I’ve had in Hawaii where the tuna is marinated. Instead, chunks of tuna, cucumbers, and red and green onion are served on rice and drizzled with a house-made poke sauce and a spicy Sriracha mayo. Despite the Sriracha and big chunks of jalapeños, the bowl has only a mild kick. Individual flavors were distinct and fresh but blended nicely in each bite.

Next week, I will cover Steve Draheim’s Shimshon Israeli Street Food and the Feast Food Company by Chris Leyden. Both are fine-dining accomplished chefs who bring their creativity to food carts.