GOLDEN WAFFLE AND CANDYBAR FOOD TRUCKS GETTING OUR JUST DESSERTS

In the world of food trucks, ones that specialize in desserts are not as common as say burger or taco trucks. Yet, even in this health conscious world and town, the options for some mobile sweet treats is on the rise. On a recent visit to SOMA StrEat Food Park, there were actually 4 trucks doing just desserts, and while me and the SO can totally chow down on the sweets, we limited ourselves to choosing just two of them try. Waffles out of a truck is not a totally novel concept, to me they seem to have been one of the first kind of trucks you'd see outside bars late at night along with the taco trucks. Because sometimes when you are drunk or whatever, you don't necessarily want salty you might crave sweet. Needless to say, I was in the mood to try some waffles so we hit up Golden Waffle first.

More minibus than actual truck, they serve the original sweet Belgium Leige waffles with tiny bits of sugar in the waffle. They do a couple savory but we are here for the sweet and our choices really come down to what kind of toppings we want. Without going too overboard we get one with caramelized apples and one with banana. Both have whipped cream and powdered sugar on top because why not. 

One thing I can say about them is they don't skimp on the toppings, there was plenty of fruit and cream. Though I have to say right off that these were not served warm and that fact alone seemed to cloud our judgement about these. We both kept saying how much better it would have been if things had been heated up. The waffles were decent by themselves but not made to order or warmed up in a microwave either which could have helped them be great waffles. The bananas were just cut up an placed on top, I think we mistakenly assumed they'd be heated or something, but alas no. Even the caramelized apples appeared to have been done before hand and just spooned on top from a container. I mean the mere fact they are listed on the menu as caramelized just screams to me they should be a warm topping or maybe that's just me? Either way, while there wasn't anything taste wise wrong with these things, they just didn't wow us as something that great or that we'd need to try again and I'm gonna chalk a lot of that up to them being served cold, which was a real shame. Not ones to let something like this slow us down we headed to our next choice the CandyBar Dessert Truck. In this case I believe the truck came first as they now have a brick and mortar location you can visit out in the Western Addition. The truck has a limited menu, but it's enough when you are talking desserts. We settle on the CandyBars candy bar and the s'mores tart. 

                         

The house made candy bar is cookie dough topped with chocolate, marshmallow, pretzels, corn flakes, peanut butter and peanuts. It's about double the size of regular candy bar as well as thicker and chewier and sweeter. Even with the salty addition of peanuts and pretzels this is a sugar bomb, it will blow you up and then you'll come crashing down. It's a chewy bite that could have benefited from a bit of crunch since the peanuts, pretzels and corn flakes seem to have gotten a little soft from the other ingredients and the refrigeration required to keep this bar together. It was different, not bad, just different. I wasn't the biggest fan of it, probably could have used more peanut butter, but for me, a little bit too much mush and sugar to totally enjoy. The tart is a graham cracker crust with a bottom layer of caramel then chocolate ganache topped with a house made marshmallow square that is butane torched to roast it. For the most part we liked this as it does give you the flavors of a s'more with a twist of caramel added in. I do wish the marshmallow had been heated a bit more. While it looked nice and brown on the outside it was still a bit firmer than normal underneath. Overall, even though we weren't like wow this is great, it was a good effort on a traditional dessert. I will say it was $3 for the candy bar and $6 for the tart which is pretty good pricing for a food truck and San Francisco. I was also intrigued enough to want try out their restaurant version that also serves dessert wines. 

After our over consumption of too many desserts we pretty much needed a lie down to let the sugar jitters subside. But even after that, my opinion of the treats didn't change--the waffles would have been better warm, the candy bar was too soft and the tart was good though not spectacular. I'd probably still try something else from the CandyBar truck next time I come across them. The Golden Waffle truck, eh...not so much.