We live in interesting times. Especially when it comes to food. The days of food trucks serving gourmet fare have evolved into pop-ups and nomadic restaurants like Zepeda's Pizza and Me Gusta Tamales from Pacoima peddling their wares at Bakersfield farmers markets.
Of course, I have readers to thank for keeping me in the loop on all this. I heard about Zepeda's some time ago and believe I first sampled their pizza in the parking lot at the Dionysus Brewing location. A reader who moved here from Santa Barbara recently emailed for some pizza suggestions and I remembered Zepeda's and thought I should check it out.
I went to the website, which sent me to 2nd Phase Brewing downtown on a weekend night, but all they had there that night was sandwiches. What I was after was the pizza coming out of the visible fire brick oven that I remembered, and the website sent me to the Sunday farmers market at the Kaiser Permanente parking lot near The Marketplace.
What is great about the menu at Zepeda's is the variety, with a standard margherita or pepperoni for $12, and many great specialty pizzas at $14, such as a strawberry pizza, a peach pizza and a blueberry goat cheese pizza, which just sounds like an inspired pairing. On our visit we sampled the "classic with a twist" ($14), pepperoni with roasted garlic and onions as well as pesto sauce on top.
You could see the chef grabbing a mound of dough, forming the crust and building it on the spot. The ingredients are first-rate, and the fire adds a nice smokiness to the cheese, a dark brown tint to the edge of the crust and a really firm crispness with some airy texture on the inside portion. It was as good as I remembered from the previous sampling, the strings of onions and the dark sliced garlic cloves on top elevating the dish.
Two other specialty pizzas I can recommend are the garlic pizza with garlic butter in place of tomato sauce and more roasted garlic, and a specialty pizza made with pears, goat cheese, roasted garlic, olive oil and arugula.
Not by chance, I had another gustatory experience to check out there thanks to reader Jill Foley who had emailed me about the delightful Me Gusta tamales that she enjoyed at the G Street Saturday farmers market.
"I just spoke to Jackie Allen who runs both of the farmers markets," she wrote. "If you do anything on the farmers markets, the yogurt at both of those farmers markets is fabulous (the lemon and strawberry are better than ice cream!) and Jackie recommends the potato-dill bread at Blue Magnolia but that one is only at the Saturday farmers market on G St."
That bread sounds fabulous and I'll try it in the future, but as this was December when I visited, I took a pass on the yogurt. Me Gusta is actually based in Pacoima, and they offer nine different tamales, some hot, some cold for future dining, and Jaclyn Allen's enthusiasm is completely warranted.
We sampled the chicken tamale with green tomatillo sauce and the chile and cheese with a green Anaheim chile and Monterey Jack cheese. They were moist to the max, so flavorful and hot coming out of two giant steaming aluminum tubs. Many customers were ordering a dozen, some hot, some wrapped in plastic bags for future meals. I was tempted to try the three sweet ones (pineapple, strawberry and sweet corn) as well as the vegetable (unspecified veggies seasoned with garlic and onions). Those will be sampled on future visits.
The man behind the counter pointed out that they use no lard in these tamales, and they are not spicy, though you can get a spicy red sauce on the side if you want to jack it up. If you go to Pacoima, they have a huge factory making tamales, which are sold outside on the street in a similar stand.
There was a consistent line of about a dozen people at Me Gusta, so be patient. If you're getting both, order the pizza first since they make those as ordered and it takes some time. Sampling either of them will leave you seeking them out more in the future.
Pete Tittl's Dining Out column appears in The Californian on Sundays. Email him at pftittl@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter at @pftittl.
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