Umami on the Move
From the outside, Chef Richard Jimenez’s stark-white food truck looks a bit like a science lab on wheels. Apart from the logo and menu board, its only decoration is a molecular drawing of the structure of L-glutamate— the amino acid responsible for the sometimes-elusive, meaty flavor called umami.
“For me, a meal is not complete unless you have that. If you don’t get that bite, that mouthfeel, it’s not balanced. From there, then you add the acidity, the saltiness, the texture and all those other things,” said Jimenez. “But I wanted to make sure every one of these dishes had that [savory flavor].”
The food Jimenez sells through his window is as much an ode to umami as the truck’s name, Umami Avenue. But that isn’t the only factor that sets it apart. Every dish on the menu is a cross-cultural mashup, and the most consistent through line is the collision of Asian and Italian flavors.
Jimenez has always toyed with unique combinations of ingredients and cultures (no surprise as his professional background spans Italian, Thai and French cooking) but a March 2019 trip to Europe gave him the push he needed to leave his post as executive chef of the upscale Eagle restaurant Le Coq d’Or and take his fusion food dreams on the road.
As part of a quest to eat at Michelin-starred restaurants across Europe, Jimenez stopped at the one-star Italian eatery Bistro 64 in Rome. When he dug into his food, he was stunned to taste miso and other strikingly Asian flavors in the traditional dishes. A quick conversation with the waiter revealed that the restaurant’s chef was Japanese.
“It was the least expensive of all of the Michelin restaurants I’ve ever been to, and it had the most bold, elegant, punch-you-in-the-face flavors,” Jimenez recalled.
“I shamelessly ordered an extra dish.” Six months later, he bought his food truck. Jimenez’s own fusion dishes are the product of astute trial and error. Sometimes, he said, he has a deep enough relationship with his ingredients to get a flavor combination right on the first try. Other times, a dish takes multiple iterations in the commercial kitchen he’s subleasing from Reel Foods Fish Market to perfect. Either way, the results are unique, and uniquely delicious.
When Jimenez rolled up to The Switchback food truck park in Harris Ranch on a windy night in October, coconut-kimchi chicken, Thai-talian shrimp pasta and bolognese alla yakisoba were on the menu. The chicken dish—which stars a rich, tangy coconut milk-and-kimchi sauce over a bed of spiced basmati rice and grilled chicken, topped with cilantro, lime and chili threads—is Jimenez’s crowning achievement.
“That recipe is going to go on my grave,” he said. “Sometimes when I tell people what’s in my ingredients, like my coconut-kimchi sauce, they’re a little wary. I’m, like, ‘Just give me a chance,’ so I hand them a spoon and that’s how I can get them to order it. You have to do that sometimes, because sometimes people aren’t that open minded.”
After years of working in professional kitchens, including local stints at Angell’s, Bardenay, Cottonwood Grille and Le Coq d’Or, and time spent training under Chef Scott Leibfried of Hell’s Kitchen in California, Jimenez said working in a food truck has been both odd and refreshing. Though he misses the aesthetic artistry possible in a dining room setting, he feels it was worth giving up.
“It’s a little different for me putting food on a paper plate. It’s a little hard,” he said. “But what’s awesome for me is that everybody can enjoy my food now instead of only people on special occasions. You don’t have to spend $100 for dinner.”
That said, Jimenez has still kept a hand in fine dining. Early next year, he plans to fly to Seattle to consult on the opening of a new restaurant, Feast, and in the meantime he’s operating a private dining, wine dinner and catering service called Bella Assiette in Boise. The latter is named after his daughter, Bella, and means “beautiful plate” in Italian.
Jimenez, the son of two chef-restaurateurs (Paul and Mary Jean Wegner of Boise’s Cucina di Paolo), hopes to someday have a brick-and-mortar restaurant of his own. But in the meantime, he’s proud to be making the food he loves rather than dishes a restaurant owner demands.
“It’s a good feeling,” he said, “because people associate me with my business now, and it’s 100% a representation of me rather than me having to have guidelines or boundaries.”
To learn more about Jimenez’s ventures and find out where the food truck will pop up next, visit Umami Avenue’s page on Facebook or follow the truck on Instagram @umamiavenue.
Umami Avenue | @umamiavenue
Reel Foods Fish Market | @reelfoodsfishmarket
The Switchback | @switchbackboise
Bardenay | @bardenay
Cottonwood Grille | @cottonwoodgrille
Bella Assiette
