Can you imagine having the most common USA street food hotdog but with exquisite Japanese flavours? well, Japadog food truck made is unimaginable yet delicious combination possible. let’s dive into their journey with some delicious food.
Noriki Tamura and his wife immigrated to Vancouver in 2005 with a big dream of opening a food truck of his own brand. At first, Tamura made a plan to sell crapes but he failed due to the laws of Vancouver's strict street food. He changed to open the first Japadog stand in the same year. It wasn't a cakewalk for the Japanese couple, due to language barriers and they didn't have enough money to hire staff to work for them. But, all the hard work was paying off as Japadog was getting noticed by the people in Vancouver in a steady manner. After hustling for almost 4 years they achieved great success with their first truck and they were also awarded the "Best of Vancouver" for the third year in a row. In the summer of 2009 Japadog came up with their second food truck and from there it was an upward journey for them. Japadog started its journey from Burrard and Smithe St and then it branched out and currently it is located in 9 locations which include two premium locations of the USA.
We visited the Japadog food truck in Lansdowne Centre near Richmond. It won't be too much to say that we were blown away by the food, it had all the authentic flavours but it's wasn't overshadowing the hotdog part of it. the balance was perfect with goes with the name of the truck.
The most famous dish in this food truck was Terimayo which is topped with teriyaki sauce, Japanese mayo sauce and shredded seaweed. We ordered 4 different hot dogs which were Kurobuta love meat, Karage, Tonkatsu and Wagyu beef terimayo. each of us was given a token against our orders and we had to wait for on average 15 mins to get the food delivered. The food was served hot in a disposable styrofoam box. we sat at the Japadog's curbside tables near the food truck to enjoy our meal. When we taste it, the bread is soft, fresh, fragrant and delicious but it was not dry and the flavours of each hotdog were different and delicious. The best part about this food stand was that it tried to capture the true essence of Japanese cuisine. Along with their famous hotdogs, they serve appetizers like Takoyaki and Ramune soda's which is very authentic and we would like to try these out someday.
Overall it was an amazing experience and the staff were very accommodating. It was indeed one of the experiences which we are gonna cherish and maybe will plan another visit very soon because it was not a one time visit kind of eatery, the dishes and the flavours they offer made us more curious to try out the other dishes.