According to a report one week ago in Nation’s Restaurant News, Baja Fresh has acquired the Calbi truck.

The new franchised truck made its debut this past weekend at the West Coast Franchise Expo in Los Angeles.

Astute readers will remember that there was some controversy with Calbi when it comes to their version of Korean tacos.

As NRN notes:

The first version of the truck was often seen as very similar in color design to the Kogi truck.

To dispel confusion, Lee said the Calbi truck has a new design and logo that he said would further distinguish the brand as something entirely different from Kogi — aside from the common theme of Korean-Mexican food.

Alice Shin, a spokeswoman for Kogi, declined to comment on Calbi’s franchising plans, except to note that members of the Kogi team did not help Calbi get its start, as had been reported by some food bloggers. “We’ve never had a working relationship with Calbi,” she said.

Shin also said Kogi officials currently have no plans to franchise.

However, despite while Shin says that they’ve never worked with Calbi, Kogi blogged that they had in fact worked with the folks behind Calbi, before it even was Calbi, to help get them set up. Initially, Kogi had a blog post (now deleted) saying that they’d helped out:

It was so successfuL, in fact, that the owner approached us for more joint business pLans — but it just was a littLe too much, too fast. PLus, we’re of the nomadic sort, so we’re a bit wary of tattooing ourseLves with a partnership after just 2 weeks of a joint project. So we parted ways… onLy to find out that about a month or so later, these same peopLe compLeteLy copied our “business modeL” from the inside out, even going so far as taking the recipes that Chef Roy had so graciousLy made for them and seLLing them on a newLy stickered truck, trying to mimic the spirit of our bLog posts, starting up their own Twitter feed and using our past coLLaboration to heLp themseLves in their new endeavors. ALso… parking at the exact locations and cross streets that we park at.

It is understandabLe that some of the team members — weLL yes, feeL duped — but more than that, they feeL emotionaLLy gutted. We invited these peopLe into our famiLy and they took advantage of us. Whether it’s to compete with us or it’s because they don’t have the confidence to work with what they know and what they’ve got, I don’t know.

All I do know is that some of the team members feeL reaLLy hurt and betrayed, for had they onLy asked — had they just said, “Yo! We want to start up our own truck too. Can you heLp us?”, we totaLLy wouLd have given them a heLping hand in that direction.

Plus, it’s also important to note that Baja Fresh has tried their line of of Korean burritos before — calling them first Kogi, and later Gogi Burritos.

So, is this now the real mainstreaming of Korean tacos?

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Coolhaus is probably the most unique of all of the LA nouveau food trucks that I’ve heard of. They sell architecturally-themed ice cream sandwiches with fun names like Frank Behry and Mintimalism. One of the truck’s two founders, Natasha Case, took some time out of her busy schedule to respond to a few questions.

1) So really, what’s Coolhaus all about? Are you guys just big architecture nerds or what? Are you architects yourselves?

Coolhaus is the first project under the Farchitecture (food + architecture) umbrella. Farchitecture actually has academic roots - while Natasha was at UCLA Architecture Grad School, she did an independent study class exploring the relationship between food and design. Coolhaus is the first attempt at marrying the two through the use of mobile food (becoming everyone’s local restaurant despite the urban sprawl of LA), edible wrappers (questioning the “building envelope” and practicing sustainable eating by consuming the wrapper rather than throwing it away), and introducing Architects/Architectural themes into the mainstream dialogue (by naming the sandwiches after them). And yes, we are big nerds. Natasha is an Architect and Freya is a Real Estate Developer.

2) What the heck does architecture have to do with ice cream sandwiches anyway?

I think the real question is, why the heck not?! Visually and literally, the ice cream sandwich has a similar structure to a house: there is a cookie slab, ice cream walls, and a cookie (shed) roof. Ice cream also has such universal appeal, and we really enjoy using ice cream to deconstruct flavors ie we are coming out with a “breakfast sandwich” which is made of brown butter bacon ice cream between waffle slabs. The ice cream sandwich seemed like a perfect vehicle/product for our first Farchitecture project.

3) How do you make them? What makes an ideal ice cream sandwich? What’s your background in food/cooking/eating? How’d you decide to start this?

Lots of experimentation and taste testing! We started out making all the cookies and ice cream “in-haus,” but because we’ve grown so fast, we have outsourced our recipes to companies that pride themselves in using all-natural ingredients (ie, Milk) who makes our ice cream.

I think an ideal ice cream sandwich is definitely made-to-order, freshly created on the spot and custom-built according to the customer’s desires (custom creations have a more architectural sensibility). The sandwiches have soft cookies that aren’t too thick or too sweet that it overpowers the ice cream taste; in between is a hunky scoop of ice cream that is soft enough to compress. The variety of flavors range from extra rich and creamy, to subtle red wine reduction flavor, to light and fruity sorbets…something for everyone!

4) Has Frank Gehry ever showed up to try Frank Behry? What would happen if he did?

Funny you should ask! We actually went to Gehry partners a few weeks back and Frank Gehry had a sandwich, but not the Frank Behry. He actually decided upon the Orange Julius Shulman (I think he may have a bit of a dairy problem).

I wasn’t there for the event, but I hear he cut the line and demanded to have his sandwich made very quickly! Oh, Mr. Behry.

5) What’s your favorite food/taco truck in LA?

Besides ours? Hmmm…I know Freya loves Taco Zone (I’ve never actually tried it! yikes!). We both love the Green Truck and the Border Grill Truck!

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I was contacted out of the blue by Akash Kapoor, of Curry Up Now, a new Indian taco truck based in Burlingame, Calif. (near SFO airport, in San Mateo County). I haven’t had the pleasure yet of trying its wares, but boy does it sound good!

1) What’s Curry Up Now all about? How’d you get started? What’s your background in food/cooking/eating?

Curry Up Now is essentially authentic Indian street food served on the street, where it belongs. We have mixed in some burritos and tacos in the menu to keep the spirit of a lonchera.

We originally thought about this 10 years ago but other business interests kept us from getting started. Seeing the success of Kogi and other ethnic trucks in SoCal, rekindled the idea and three to four months later, here we are. We have absolutely no background in the food business. We are foodies who have a passion for cooking and sharing.

2) What trucks have been your inspiration? Why start a truck, anyway? What are your favorite local trucks and why?

The success of Kogi and other trucks in LA have been a huge inspiration.

Since our focus is Indian street food, we wanted it to be just that, street food served from a truck.

Believe it or not, we haven’t eaten from a truck, local or anywhere else as yet. One of our associates tried the Kung Fu taco truck in the city and had good things to say about them. I plan on visiting them, Liba SF and El Tonayense soon.

3) What’s been the permit process like? I see you’re operating in San Mateo County, not San Francisco. Is that any easier/harder? Is that a deliberate decision?

The permit process has been brutal. The San Mateo County permit was a breeze but most Peninsula cities have been unwelcoming. This is due to unlicensed trucks all over El Camino Real from Daly City to Mountain View. However, we are hoping Burlingame, Foster City and Belmont will work things out with us. Burlingame has been most helpful and have allowed us to be out on a weekend to weekend basis as of now. We should have the Redwood City permit in a few days as well.

Our truck is in the shop this week to be readied for Santa Clara and San Francisco permits. We will be in the city and South Bay within 3 weeks. We wanted to start with the Peninsula and have a truck each in the city, South & East Bay.

4) What’s the best thing on your menu? How did you come up with these specific items? How does what you’re offering differ from traditional Indian street food?

I’d say the chicken kathi, deconstructed samosa with meat & chana and the doubles (from Trinidad & Tobago). The chicken kathi was inspired by frequent visits to Nizam’s, Kolkatta as a kid but we have changed it a little bit. A few people in the family prefer the samosa shell to the filling, thus was born the deconstructed samosa topped with meat keema. We remove the filling from the shell, top it off with chana, meat keema, onions, jalapenos, tamarind & mint/coriander chutney. Doubles is basically chana bhatura Trindiad & Tobago style. chana bhatura figures in the top five favorite Indian street foods and we had to have this on the truck even though its a pain to make on the truck. We have tried to keep this as trini as possible and have been pleasantly surprised with the response. Since the deconstructed samosa is a home grown recipe, I would rate it as the best thing on the menu and it tastes amazing to boot.

Our food is traditional and authentic Indian Street food, however, we have ‘taco truckized’ the menu with burritos and tacos. We will be featuring a curry from a different region of India each month as well.

5) Thums Up or Limca?

None, Pepsi 0 . We will have Limca & Thums Up on the truck along with mango lassi and mint lemonade.

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