San Francisco: Off the Grid (Minna St)

Off the Grid has a couple of trucks out on Minna St every Wednesday.  It's ridiculously close to my work, so I can't believe it took me until last week to get my act together and check it out:

I wasn't particularly interested in any of the trucks, but I didn't want to leave empty-handed and Chairman Bao looked the most appealing:

I'm Chinese.  There's something in me that balks at paying for overpriced "Asian fusion" stuff.  My friends and I avoided Chairman Bao like the plague the two times we went to Off the Grid at Fort Mason.  So it was with much skepticism that I got in line last Wednesday.

Chairman Bao offers two kinds of bao.  There's the taco-sized, white steamed bun for $3.75 and the hamburger-sized baked bun for $6.75.  I'm not a fan of the white steamed bun (which you sometimes see served with Peking duck), so I went with the baked bun.

I ordered the pork belly and pickled daikon:

It kills me to say this, but it was DELICIOUS.  Dammit.  The pork belly was sweet and juicy and the edges were actually crispy!

Sigh...this just goes to show that preconceptions can get in the way of good food.  I almost missed out on a great bun.


Off the Grid
http://offthegridsf.com/