As I’ve mentioned before, there’s not a lot of Filipino food out there that’s available for sale that will live up to what my mom used to cook. I do have a theory — most Filipino restaurants that have lasted more than a few years do one dish really well, and the rest of the food they serve is is just OK. With the advent of these gourmet food trucks serving Filipino food, I’m not too sure if that theory is holding.

Let me get to the point. I tried out the White Rabbit Truck Friday. It was their good luck — or maybe not — that they decided to come to the CBS Studio City Radford lot the day I had brought a sandwich to work and was just looking for a reason to buy something other than my sandwich. So I immediately went to the ATM and took some cash out and took a lovely walk out to the main gate.

After the debacle in Calabasas, I’d sworn I wouldn’t do the whole food truck event again and would only eat from one if it happened to be nearby when I was in the mood. In fact, I’ve been wanting to try Coolhaus, but the timing was just not right.

Anyway, back to White Rabbit. As you can tell from the headline, I wasn’t overly impressed. But its not White Rabbit’s fault, really. It is “fusion” so its not going to be what I expect, say, adobo is supposed to be.

For example, if you were looking for a chicken bowl, this would be perfectly acceptable. But if you tell me I’m buying an adobo bowl, I’d expect a leg and/or thigh with crispy, golden brown skin and possibly a bay leaf stuck to one of the pieces of chicken. I don’t want to say it, but in the interest of truth, my first thought upon looking at this adobo bowl was….”it looks like cat food.” (Not that cat food is horrid, but its not what I’d want to eat at work. Just sayin.) But, as I ate it, I think it grew on me. It is definitely not what I would picture or even cook myself, and the taste was….more subdued than I’m used to adobo tasting, so take that as you will.

The beefsteak bowl, however, threw me off even more.

Beefsteak, or bistek as some like to call it, is usually made with slabs of beef like chuck, flank, or sirloin. I’m not entirely sure if they used that here, then ground it up, because I did find some of those, um, more unsavory pieces that you have to deal with sometimes when eating tough cuts of beef. But, to me, beefsteak should not be ground up. Sure, ground beef is technically beef, but where the heck is the steak! Goodness gracious. I ended up eating this for dinner, though. And the taste hinted of citrus, but definitely did not have the strong taste of beefsteak done right. I’m sorry.

And even though I am a dessert aficionado, I did not try any from this truck. White chocolate champorado? Red velvet leche flan? No. Oh, honey, no.

I dislike writing these types of blog posts, because I don’t want to discourage folks, but I really wish folks would take these traditional dishes and step them up, not water them down.