Odang Udon food truck

This place has been on my list since souperman posted on it a while ago on CH. With their move to SOMA street park and their regular lunch and dinner hours, I was finally able to eat there this weekend. I had the classic noodles in dashi with wakame, enoki mushrooms, and green onions, while my husband ordered the city udon which is a non-soup Korean fusion version. I’m a purist when it comes to udon so I didn’t try any of his except he gave me his kimchee on the side and that was REALLY good kimchee, like better than at most korean restaurants.

The freshly made noodles were good, with a nice chew. Not as good as the udon places in LA but there are no other udon specialists in the Bay Area, so I guess you could say it’s best of Bay Area. I haven’t tried the udon at Rintaro, and I like the fresh udon they sell (don’t know if it’s still available) at Japantown better, but then I have to cook them at home. I prefer thicker udon noodles because they have better chew. Odang’s were on the thin side. The problem with thicker ones is that they take much longer to cook, which might not be feasible for a food truck.

Dashi and tempura vegetables were all fine, nothing remarkable but nothing that detracted from the udon, thank goodness. Husband commented that the steak in his dish was over salted.

I would certainly eat their udon again, especially since udon is hard to find and is my favorite of the three major Japanese noodles. I would like to see this noodle making talent situated in a brick and mortar restaurant so that I don’t have to eat soup noodles in the wind , trying to keep the napkins from blowing away while my soup is cooling too fast.

And souperman, if this truck qualifies as Asian fusion I would say it’s my favorite of them, better than Chairman.

And if it qualifies as a truck, since it’s technically a trailer.

Have you tried Oolong Noodles on Washington St.?

Jeez, Oolong didn’t do themselves any favors by picking a mysterious name, did they. It’s now on my list.

Kaka Udon and Oolong Noodles have the same owner. How are their noodles?

I visited Kaka once, and was very disappointed with their noodles (soft to the point of mushiness). Some Yelp reviews point to a high degree of inconsistency there.

I had a much more felicitous experience at Oolong. I imagine most of the owner’s attention is going to Oolong, since it’s a much bigger, fancier place in a high rent area, and would hesitate to return to Kaka (talk about ill-chosen names!) without more encouragement.