Big Boys mobile food truck caters to the local area

Published 4:03 pm Wednesday, June 5, 2013

The mobile eatery revolution has come to Pacific, courtesy of Big Boy’s Filipino Food Truck.

Foodies, culinary enthusiasts and the curious can get a taste of Nate Daep’s and Melanie Querubin’s innovative menu at the food truck’s regular location, 136 Stewart Road SW.

The food truck is open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Daep, 29, decided to delve into the food business a couple years ago after getting laid off from his job at Xerox.

“I didn’t want to go back to working 9-to-5 or working under somebody,” Daep said. “I was really asking myself what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and the food truck idea came up.”

After looking for a suitable mobile kitchen, Daep stumbled upon a truck with an already established route.

Daep, along with his partner and fiancee, Querubin, 28, originally ran the operation the traditional way, showing up at lunchtime at local warehouses and plants.

“I kept it going until I could figure out how I wanted to serve the Filipino food,” Daep said of his native cuisine. “I wanted to come out with sandwiches and burritos and just bring different flavors together. The traditional meats, like chicken adobo, I tried serving on my catering routes, and people liked that. But when we started to develop the menu for Big Boy’s, Melanie said, ‘Why don’t we try pandesal sandwiches?’”

Using the Portuguese-style sweet bread popular in the Philippines as a base, Daep and Querubin put their own spin on the food, building a menu heavy on innovation without sacrificing the traditional flavors.

“We tried a chicken sandwich first, it was the Jalapeno Popper,” Daep said. “Everybody loved it.

“We started adding things that islanders like to enjoy, meats like Spam and sausage,” he said. “So we came up with the linguiça patty.”

Daep and Querubin converted linguiça, normally a link sausage, to a patty.

“Everybody likes that little change-up,” Daep said.

They also turned to fish for flavor options in their sandwiches.

“Instead of doing pulled fish like we usually eat, we just cut it into strips,” Daep said. “We call that the Nemo. That one is of our popular items.”

They soon began wrapping their sandwich fixings in flour tortilla shells, adding still another dimension to their menu.

Despite the emphasis on innovation, Big Boy’s offers a taste of tradition with the lumpia appetizer, a deep fried, meat-filled pastry similar to egg rolls.

Business for the truck has been growing.

In addition to their regular hours in Pacific, Big Boy’s travels to wherever it’s needed.

“Being mobile is a plus. We can go to any event we want, even private parties,” Daep said. “This summer is pretty swamped. We just got offered a spot at the Bite of Seattle. They picked eight food trucks from Washington, and they chose us as one of them. We just started six months ago, but we feel really blessed for that opportunity.”

Daep hopes to test other markets later this year.

“We kind of want to be in a central location,” Daep said. “Tukwila will be a testing ground, plus there are a lot of Filipinos in Renton and Tukwila and not a lot of Filipino restaurants that serve the things that we serve.”

For now, Daep is focused on establishing his business and winning over more customers.

“I was just fortunate to have people believe in my passion,” he said of his job. “Melanie helped invest, as well as my auntie in San Diego. They believed in me. … Her love for me was so much that she quit her job to work full time with me. So far it’s working out pretty well.”