Bon Me | Bold, Fresh, and Fun Vietnamese Cuisine

Summer in a Glass

As our start date draws near, and our key menu items are nearly ready for service, we are starting to think about drinks!  At our tasting at City Hall we served a lemon ginger tea that was pretty polarizing.  Some people loved the “kick-in-your-pants” ginger flavor while others found it too spicy.  We had fun last weekend playing around with the recipe for a Thai basil lime soda.  It is definitely a summer beverage, but it was fun to sip it on a freezing February day in Boston and imagine ourselves on a tropical beach in Southeast Asia . . . .

Now you may be wondering why an inspired Vietnamese food truck is using Thai basil.  Why not use Vietnamese basil?  Actually, Thai basil is a common ingredient in Vietnamese food.  Thai basil is more pungent and a bit spicier than the basil most commonly used in the United States.  People say it has a hint of mint or a bitter flavor. You will have to let us know what you think when you see this drink on our menu!

If you have any other drink ideas, please let us know!

A few days ago, Ali and I drove to Connecticut to check out the progress on the Bon Me Truck.  We were very excited and also a bit nervous.  After all, this truck is essentially going to be our business for the foreseeable future, and we’ve put a ton of time and invested much of our savings into making sure it comes out just right.  We had diagrams and discussed every detail with the builder, but it’s still a question whether the result would be what we envisioned.

In a few months we'll be serving banh mi sandwiches through this window!

When we walked into the garage, we saw our bright-yellow truck sitting in the corner with a giant serving window cut in the passenger side.  The roll-up door on the back was replaced with brand-new hinge doors with two windows cut in each door.  We also have a smaller window cut into the driver’s side to make the truck feel a bit more open.  We really wanted the truck to feel very light and open, and all these windows are a big part of that.  We also got a translucent fiberglass roof on the truck rather than the standard aluminum to let more light in during the day.  Our service window is about eight feet wide and set low to allow people to see into the truck and interact with our cooks more easily.  We want to go for an open-kitchen feel on the truck, and I think it’s going to work out quite nicely.

A peek into our truck

Stepping inside the truck, we could see that all the major equipment had been installed.  Steve (from CMS) is custom-building the steam table, so that’s still a work in progress.  Most of the other major items needed to be hooked up, but we could get a feel for the truck.  I’m very glad we found a wide truck, as the inside actually feels pretty spacious.  We had a scary moment when Steve referred to our fridge as a freezer.  Our sandwich table also had a fridge underneath, so Steve was assuming the separate fridge was a freezer.  Nothing frozen in our truck…we just need an extra fridge to hold all the stuff we’re going to sell!  Fortunately Steve had ordered and installed the right thing, so disaster averted.

Here is the new window we're putting above the steam table

We spent some time with Steve mapping out the shelving and some other minor details of the truck. All in all it’s looking great, and it should be done really soon.

Can you tell which mayonnaise is homemade?

While testing recipes for Bon Me sandwiches, I tried using all sorts of jarred mayo from the grocery store.  They’re all very similar, jello-y and flavorless.  When I finally I made my own batch, I knew I couldn’t go back to the jarred stuff.  Homemade anything usually taste a whole lot better than the store bought equivalent, and it’s absolutely true of mayonnaise.  It does require a bit of elbow grease and a whisk, but it’s worth it.  Bon Me’s first batch of mayo is yellow and luscious, and I want to eat it by the spoonful!

Why source locally? This can be a point of tension for many small businesses. You might think price is the first obstacle but in reality that piece is much more flexible (open to negotiation) that many of the other challenges.

First, there are the challenges related to our business — being a small gourmet food truck. For example, we won’t meet order minimums for most distributors (local or other wise). This means that we have to go to restaurant stores to buy our nonperishable items and find bakeries and produce companies that will charge little to nothing for delivering a small quantity of product.

Also due to our size and business model, deliveries is another challenge. Accepting deliveries at the truck won’t work because a) we don’t have the space and b) we are hoping to be so busy we won’t have time to stop and check-in a delivery. Since we are so small, we won’t be at our kitchen much, so having food delivered there is not really an option either.

These are problems related to our business model and size. There are also larger, more systemic issues of working in Boston that make sourcing locally challenging. For one, many of the larger farms that do wholesale are further away from Boston. This means either more time away from the farm for the farmer to deliver produce or it means hiring a distributor which adds cost. Two, the streets in Boston are so narrow, traffic is horrible, and parking is impossible. (Especially when there are snow drifts up to the roof.)  Why would you want to leave your bucolic fields of produce and flocks of chickens to drive a huge refrigerated truck around Boston? I don’t think I would! Or if I did, only for a really fabulous sale — not to drop off 20 lbs of carrots to Bon Me.

BUT, all these challenges aside farmers and food businesses are trying to make it work. Metro Pedal Power is providing distribution in Boston, Somerville, and Cambridge for two local farms. Other farmers are making weekly trips to the city to drop off Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares and are interested in getting some publicity on local restaurants’ menus.

We at Bon Me are hopeful that we can make it work for us and for the farmer. We know that our customers will appreciate the high quality and taste of food grown locally. Also, knowing that we, as a local business, are supporting other local businesses just seems to make sense!

As a new small food business we are learning about the challenges of finding kitchen space in the Boston area.  Now, you may think that because we’re small we can just use our home kitchens, but the health code does not allow it.  (Although annoying, this is actually a good thing to keep our food safe.)  Kitchen space that is inspected and permitted for commercial use is tight in the Boston/Cambridge area.  I guess if you consider how expensive residential rents are — it’s not hard to believe that kitchens, even commercial ones, are tiny and are in use nearly every second of the day.

That is why we are so excited about this new project in Cambridge.  It won’t be finished in time for Bon Me to start cooking in April, but it is a much needed resource for other small food businesses.  Check out their video and if you are so moved, please feel free to support this venture! (I did.)