Last Sunday I reported that I was out of food adventures to… uhh… report? Then on Saturday one just kind of fell into my lap*. A tenderloin food truck came to Boone. I’m not hitting the tenderloins hard, as they do fly in the face of my eating healthy journey, but I’m budgeting to eat about 1 a month. Since I had zero in January and it had been 2 months since I’ve had a tenderloin, my favorite enabler said I should do it. And I listen to people when they tell me exactly what I want to hear.

On the positive, a tenderloin actually isn’t super unhealthy. It is a healthy cut of meat. The real problem is that it is fried. The bun also doesn’t help much. The fries I ate as a side were way unhealthier than the tenderloin. Probably. I’m not a food scientist. I just play one on the interwebs. But there are no “red foods”. Only “green foods”, “yellow foods”, and “orange foods”.

I met Jay up there after a trip out to Wally World to pick up a new record, some pastel paper, and a Lego set.**

Jay got their pulled pork as he is not a fan of tenderloins.

Here are some pictures:

I’ve never heard of this brand of condiments.

Assist to Jay for holding the box open in the wind.

Picture by Jay.

Picture by Jay.

Picture by Jay.

On a technical note, these images are the first foodtography images I’ve taken (well for mass public consumption) since I switched from the Pixel 5 to the Pixel Pro 8.

But you probably care more about the food.

The Good for starters:

+ The fries really hit the spot. Maybe it was because they were the first fried food I’ve had since… well it has been a minute. Unless you count air fried foods. Then it hasn’t been all that long. Unless kolaches are fried. If that is the case, the first fried food since I ate a poppyseed kolache 4 hours earlier***.
+ The tenderloin was a good thickness.
+ The bun-meat ratio was right on.

The Bad:

+ The breading on the tenderloining was salty. Not to a point where it was inedible, but definitely to a point where you knew it was there and you didn’t love it.
+ Jay said his pulled pork was also very salty. Still good but too salty.

The Ugly:

+ Scottie D. and his crew went up there shortly after we did. He was not impressed with the food safety of the crew working the joint. He noted a decided lack of gloves. Their tenderloins tasted like plastic. He said they definitely had a decided plastic aftertaste. I definitely didn’t experience that and I’m not sure what would even cause that. I did not observe the cooks at work. Jay did the ordering and I just mostly stood back and waited, wondering why it was so much colder in the Dollar General parking lot than it had been on the High Trestle Trail just a few hours earlier. Jay did note that he saw some plastic gloves blowing around (so they did have them) and it is just speculation that maybe some of those blew into a fryer.

The Final Verdict:

+ I wouldn’t eat there again. I mean I would if I hit a small town festival and they were the only food truck there, I would imbibe, but I definitely would not go out of my way to eat there and if I saw them serving up grub on the side of the road I would just drive by.

I don’t exactly have another food adventure in the hopper, but I have a sorta food adventure that I am considering.

* Teresa gets the finder’s credit for letting me know there was a food truck setting up shop.
** Teresa also gets the finder’s credit for finding this sweet Lego set that you build into a film camera.
*** You want to see a picture of the kolache don’t you? I took one, but it stays between me and my Czech friends. Better luck next kolache.