Regional chef-restaurateur Michael Schulson (Sampan, Graffiti Bar and Izakaya) has gotten into the food-truck game with recently opened Rotisserie at the Porch, which dishes out lunch (and sometimes adult beverages and dinner) weekdays from its permanent mobile digs outside 30th Street Station.
There, Schulson does his best to create the vibe of an umbrella-covered tabled nook, giving the busy lunchtime crowd a welcome respite from the daily grind and foot traffic. The view of the city helps, too.
The menu keeps it simple and relatively quick: a handful of snacks and a handful of plates, with a few specials dreamed up for good measure on Thursdays and Fridays. But they do a lot with a small menu in a small space.
Luckily we visited on a day when the specials were being served. The bánh mì sandwich had tender pork that was cooked for five hours and delicious picked vegetables that added a fresh crunchiness and a satisfying level of authenticity to the Vietnamese sandwich. Then we got whisked from the South Pacific to a German bierhaus with the kielbasa ($8), which had a ridiculously good smoky flavor and a heap of fresh sauerkraut on top of marble rye bread. The beer mustard it came with delivered a nice kick.
The watermelon salad ($7) was a perfect summer dish for a sunny day, refreshing with the addition of tomato, feta cheese and mint playing off the sweetness of the melon.
But Rotisserie turns up the heat and shows off its skills with its meats. The spit-roasted lamb ($10) was juicy and seasoned very generously with fresh herbs, served up on a huge piece of flatbread and topped with mint and cucumber.
Finally, the fish tacos ($7) were probably among the best in the city, mainly because of their simplicity. The hearty piece of perfectly breaded and seasoned fish only needed cabbage, radish and salsa verde to make it sing. Anything above and beyond that would have been overkill.
Schulson has definitely extended his winning restaurant streak into the realm of food trucks. With culinary skills like this on four wheels, and at these prices, why would you spend more money on a lesser lunch?