Tasty on Wheels


MIHO Gastrotruck rolls to local beer spots By Brandon Hernández


Thanks to a new wave of mobile gastronomists, the term “roach coach” is fast fading from the American vernacular. Two of the leaders driving that influential gourmet food truck movement on a local level are Juan Miron and Kevin Ho, the owners and operators of the MIHO Gastrotruck. Friends and former co-workers with a shared zeal for food and cooking with an emphasis on locavorian values, the duo’s mission is to bring good, morally-sound food to the masses via their kitchen-on- wheels.


“First and foremost, we are committed to a local, organic and sustainable food


philosophy,” says Ho. “We source our produce from local, family-owned farms, all of our meats are naturally raised without any hormones or antibiotics and we make all of our food by hand without any processed or pre-packaged ingredients.” While immobile eateries are coming to adopt a similar underlying ideology— some because they are truly moved to do so and others to keep up with a sustain- ability-minded status quo that’s been on the rise here for the last half decade—it’s business as usual for MIHO and one of the reasons this year-old business has gained so much notoriety among foodies who understand the work Miron and Ho put in to put out restaurant quality food from their humble yet honorable motor coach.


Continued from Page 1. The Lost Abbey


ing brands based beer style differences. Housed in the original Stone Brewing Co. location, the Port half features a lineup of fantastic beers, while The Lost Abbey name is reserved for their unique, and often award-winning, Belgian-inspired beers. With a solid lineup of year-round and seasonal releases, it’s The Lost Abbey’s barrel-aged and sour beers that have made them so sought after among beer enthu- siasts. Beers like Cuvee de Tomme, Red Poppy, Duck Duck Gooze and The Angel’s Share don’t stay on the shelves too long after they’re released. But all this popular- ity doesn’t come without its problems. Stories of beers infected the flavor-altering yeast strain Brettanomyces and over/under-carbonated bottles often come up when discussing The Lost Abbey. Only a small amount of their beers have had problems, but it’s the negative experiences that stick out. With a few recent changes The Lost Abbey hopes to fix things: they’ve recently expanded adding a new lab and a brand new bottling line. The company also hired Gwen Conley, formerly of Flying Dog in Maryland, as head of Quality Assurance and Quality Control.


Lightning Brewery


and yeast. Their other two year-round beers are English-inspired ales: Amber Ale, a high gravity ESB and Fair Weather Pale Ale, a UK style Pale Ale. Their seasonal beers include a high gravity Biere de Garde (Electrostatic Ale), a highly-hopped UK Baltic Porter (Black Lightning), a German style dopplebock (Fulminator Lager) and their Old Tempest Ale, a traditional UK Strong ale made with only UK malt, UK hops, UK ale yeast and with water adjusted to be similar to Burton-on-Trent well water.


When asked why their beer lineup is so different from other San Diego brewer- ies, Lightning founder Jim Crute responded, “We are crafting beers that others do not usually take on.” Brewing traditional styles isn’t the only inspiration Lightning has borrowed from European brewers. “We also ferment our own lactic acid from sweet wort like large continental breweries. This is used at the latter stages of wort boiling to drop the pH just a bit to encourage more vigorous yeast growth and fermentation, while also inhibiting bacterial growth.” Crute emphasized their use of style-appro- priate, historical brewing methods. “Our Elemental Pilsner is step mashed just like large German breweries, and our Thunderweizen Ale is double decoction mashed to increase dramatically its body and maltiness.” Lightning does brew one beer that isn’t entirely European inspired: Ionizer


Lager, which is a Pre-Prohibition style American Lager. In this writer’s opinion, American breweries themselves were more Euro-centric back then, and as Crute says, “Ionizer Lager is European in style with a bit of American flair mixed in.”


Iron Fist


Diego’s 2011 beer scene, and they’ve lived up to the billing, having recently signed a distribution deal with Stone Brewing Co. that ensures their beer can be found in bottle shops, bars and restaurants all over town.


Four of the five beers available when they opened were Belgian-inspired, with the fifth being a German-inspired Kölsch. They have since added two more tradition- ally American craft beers to their lineup: Velvet Glove, a 9% ABV Imperial Stout and The Gauntlet, a 9.5% ABV Imperial IPA. However, don’t think they’re forget- ting their European inspired roots - the release of The Resistance, a Belgian-style Wild Ale with Brettanomyces, is currently being planned.


MIHO outside the Whistle Stop in South Park


Cooking up dishes from scratch for an ever-changing merry-go-round menu is time-consuming enough, especially without the luxury of the sizeable kitchen brigades typical of traditional restaurants. Throw in hours of commuting to get their hands on top notch ingredients from places like Suzie’s Organic Farm in Impe- rial Beach and Crow’s Pass in Temecula, with spots like Bread & Cie and Catalina Offshore Products scattered in-between, and time begins to take on a sky-high value akin to black truffles. Thank goodness for producers who deliver like Petaluma Creamery (cheeses) and Vande Rose Farms (premium Duroc pork) or the pair might never sleep.


Given all the extra work, even the most dedicated of folks has to raise an eye- brow and the obvious question: Why go to all the trouble? “In our eyes, the reasons are really endless,” says Ho. “The industrial food system is ultimately unsustainable—for our Earth, for our own health and that of animals, for our economy and for our peace of mind. Large-scale factory farms and confined animal feeding operations are polluting the environment and destroying our soil, processed foods are ruining our bodily well being and buying food grown overseas is exporting our money rather than keeping it in our community. On top of all that, sustainable food just tastes better.”


Thanks to the MIHO guys and their dining industry contemporaries, many are not only grasping these concepts, but clinging to it and pitching in to help spread the word. Countless members of the brewing industry are among that sect, including Colby Chandler, Ballast Point Brewing Co.’s specialty brewer, manager of Home Brew Mart and long-time friend and admirer of Miron and Ho. Colby invited them to pull their truck up to the back door of Ballast Point’s Linda Vista location in No- vember to serve patrons food designed to pair with singular beers in the brewery’s tasting room.


Continued on Page 9. -5


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